


Demon Possession and Spiritual Warfare

by goddamnitaisha, Sichelblume



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Blood, Gen, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other, Rape/Non-con Elements, Suicide Attempt, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2018-06-01 11:37:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6517036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddamnitaisha/pseuds/goddamnitaisha, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sichelblume/pseuds/Sichelblume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vincent Valentine once killed his son and his blood has been on his hands ever since. He keeps Sephiroth's heritage a secret, but soon finds out: gods don't die so easily and they aren't merciful. As Omega nearly leaves Gaia a barren wasteland Sephiroth recreates himself by means of thousands of feathers and now he has only one agenda: to find out why he failed on his mission and correct the mistake. Vincent Valentine will help him, he decides, although he is not at all willing. Alone and at his mercy Vincent has to use the weapons he fears most: the demon Chaos and his own, painful past. [post DoC - where Chaos never left]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PROLOGUE

_“They say that body and soul are inseparably connected. Everything that has a soul must once have a body and everything physically existant must get a soul in order to truly come alive. Your cells are the very anchor that binds you to this world, your soul the spark that ignites them, both together recreate ‘you’ anew every seven years. Even though your body is dead and cold, as long as your soul exists, can you really ever say you died at all? Without a doubt this is why Cloud never could defeat Sephiroth. We should have known.”_

 

On the broken windowsill of a sky scraper long abadoned a single, black feather lay. It was an ordinary feather, one could have decided by its unspectacular looks; a raven’s colour, soft and down-like as a feather looked that grew straight at the base of a bird wing. It only marginally offered a contrast to the dark and curling clouds in the sky. Rain had washed out all colour from the plastic beneath it, but more rain this building didn’t have to fear, because this would be the last day it ever saw.

The air prickled with energy as the lifestream arose at the center of Midgar tearing down the remains of past struggles for good. Sephiroth, a lone but not helpless soul ran with the stream and the screams and laughter of a billion lifes past sang through his being and passed through his consciousness. A wind arose, stronger than any storm and carried away the feather from its resting place; one powerful, earthen inhale. Within its center, in a maelstrom Omega arose and all souls heeded its call. Its birth tore down brick walls, destroyed what remained of once proud Midgar. The building, short one feather on its windowsill, bent and cried out before it snapped in half, crumbling towards the ground. Neither steel nor concrete could withstand the might of Omega’s pull as it formed its body from energy and matter with Gaia’s will alone.

A roar echoed over the barren fields as Chaos awoke, singular and almighty as it burst forth from its brother. Darkness followed in its wake like the tail of a peacock. Souls recoiled from its all consuming void and huddled beneath Omega’s shell for protection. Sephiroth, though, felt no fright. A soul like his, still self-aware within the stream, shouldn’t exist, but he did and his existence was sacred, if only to himself. Here within the blood of the planet he was reduced to memories and feelings, but his body was not lost. He had managed to hide it away where not even Cloud could find it, scattered into a thousand pieces and spread out in a form nobody would recognize. His featureless face smiled as he waited for the right moment; so close was he to success that not even Chaos could appear as a danger to him albeit its wingbeats ripped the fabric of this world wherever it hit it. So much raw power - it would be his, just like everything else, for Chaos, too, was lifestream and he would combine it all within himself.  
When Omega died and Chaos gave its last, defiant roar Sephiroth’s time had come! When a billion souls all at once rained down on Midgar the Enemy of the World gave a silent, powerful cry as he called on his body and thousands of feathers followed his command. Cloud had defeated nothing on top of Shinra Headquarters; as Kadaj had fallen, Sephiroth had survived. He would not falter and he would not fail, as much he owed his mother as long as he was on this planet.

He spread his existence out like arms welcoming all that came back to him. Feathers rose from the ground, out of broken windows, earth and rubble could not deter them from striving towards their soul. They wrapped around it, encased it like armor. They formed skin and limbs and eyes as green as the stormy sea over Atlantis. Under the moon and light a man was born with skin as pale as snow and hair the colour of silver coins that fell over his back like a translucent veil. This time, it was a full rebirth; no body had aided him by accepting his soul into it and he went on his knees, gasping with hands around his throat as his lungs breathed for the first time. Even his fingernails were soft and diaphanous.

 _“I’m back; I exist”,_ he thought to himself, assuring himself of his success, his throat not yet able to form the words.

_“I’m back...”_

This time it worked. A whisper though, he had to repeat it again. He laughed and took joy in the ebony dark voice he knew as his own. Weakness dissipated fast from his limbs and his heart fell in tune with the rest of his body. It was cold, he noticed goosebumps on his skin. With his new flesh he could feel again! The wooden floor beneath his feet tickled his soles and pricked his knees. 

He sat for a long time, revelling in the sights and smells around him, the feeling of his own muscles moving beneath his skin. By the time he got up all insecurity had drained from him. Only in his eyes the fresh and new quality remained as green mako glow. He pulled a curtain from one of the windows and wrapped himself in it, uncaring of his own nudity, but remembering he needed to preserve his body heat now as long as his body was not used to it yet.

Midgar was no more; it lay before him as a scab over a wound capitalism had torn. Over it the souls of the dead danced like fireflies, slowly settling back into the planet, their eerie glow coating the world like snow. Even in this room his feet stirred up sparks as he walked. His skin absorbed them like a sponge would droplets of water. It was a beautiful sight and feeling, nourishing him better than any meal.

Sephiroth listened in to himself and found his new purpose. All of his previous attempts to take the green stream had been foiled, maybe a different approach was in order and according to that he intended to act. He had no hunger, no thirst, no fatigue, no desire except the desire for knowledge. He needed to know more. Too much of him had been lost to Gaia, dissolved within the Green, but he would need it to fulfill his purpose. Sephiroth needed to learn and he knew exactly where to begin. For a while, he would once again be the man with the black cape.


	2. The stranger at Nibelheim

It was pouring. By normal standards it was awful weather, but to the town of Nibelheim: a small inconvenience maybe. Weather like this was known at the mountains’ feet and the locals were always prepared. The wet tongues of mist from the great Nibel massif had shrunken to thin, sickly threads under the assault of the rain; within its milky chokehold and beneath buildings huddled to the rocky hills like a litter of chocobo chicks to the soft belly of their mother. Nibelheim could have been a ghost town so empty were the streets. Maybe ghosts would have made a better living here anyway. As Sephiroth passed by, the leafs of a nearby tree chimed like silver bells to a staccato of drops drumming their fingers onto the hood of his coat. It felt like a caress: death tapping his head reminding him of all that had died here. Beneath a treacherous layer of mud and water, cold ashes still lay buried.

_“Hey!”_

Sephiroth ignored the call. Putting one foot after the other he walked on; all of his silver hair savely hidden beneath the fabric. He had no fear anybody would recognize him and if they did, he had no qualms of correcting that mistake for them.

“Hey! You over there!”

He stopped. The light of an opened door spilled fire onto the puddles to his feet. He found himself standing before a large building with a balcony. Brightly lit windows cast their spell onto the lonely street luring those in who dared wander at a time like this promising warmth and company. It was the inn of the town. He could sense its welcoming aura like radiation on his skin. Two men stood near the entrace on the porch where the rain and cold wouldn’t soak them - beneath his own cloak Sephiroth was wet to his skin and were he a common man, he would have been cold to the bone. During the last few days he had made a home of this new skin and if he wished it, no shiver would betray him. The left man cast him a judgmental look, between his fingers the faint glow of a cigarette mocked him.

“Are you a traveller? You look like you could need a bowl of hot soup!”

It could have been difficult to understand him over the steady crying of the sky. Sephiroth hid his face in darkness and didn’t respond while he absorbed the details of his unsolicited colloquist. His was a hard face; not shaved regularly with an angular jaw and a sharp nose like the beak of an eagle. The sun had not been friendly to his skin and left him with freckles strewn across his face like droplets of dirt. Or maybe they were actually dirt from the hard work on the mountain’s upland meadows. A farmer, Sephiroth concluded. He was unimportant.

The man went on while his friend leaning next to him placed some tobacco on a narrow piece of paper he had placed on the windowsill. He wet it with his tongue and rolled it into a small stick.

“It’s cold outside, isn’t it? Do you bring news from Edge, Rocket Town or North Corel?”

Of course their need for information would justify inviting a stranger to meal and talk. Sephiroth turned and walked on. He had no desire for conversation. Nobody stopped him, only their eyes followed his heavy, black coat as he vanished down the street. A moment passed in which only the rain pooled in the alleys.

“You seen his feet?”

The stump of a cigarette was tossed into a puddle where it hissed and died.

“Yeah, fucking weirdo travelling barefeet.”

It all didn’t matter to Sephiroth. Mud squeezed through the spaces between his toes where his all too human skin was wrinkling and his immaculate, white nails had become darker with the planet’s matter. The cold could have made him ill, if being ill was still in the range of possibilities for this body. He thought little and worried less as he walked up the hill at the back of the town. The road was in barely any better condition here; rivers of water joined and carried away the fertile soil to leave stones and hardened clay that would later bake into a surface hard as concrete under the sun. 

Sephiroth reached his destination soon and without further disturbances. Strands of wet, silver hair slipped from his shoulders as he lifted the hood of his cape. Shinra manor lay before him dark and brooding, its windows grey and dull like the dried-out eyes of a long dead dragon.

“We meet again”, the man in the black cape greeted the thick walls. They were a prison and they were a shelter protecting what lurked within, untouched by the locals still after all this time. Nothing ever truly left Shinra manor: not memories, not pain, not even wishes uttered in better nights when silence gained just enough strength to pierce the skin. It all was preserved in these halls, frozen beneath a thick crust of moss, ivy and mould. A long time ago Sephiroth had come as a seeker to rob the building’s treasures and they had retaliated with a truth he couldn’t comprehend. 

This time he was stronger. 

With a single move of his arm he shed his cloak; it fluttered to the ground like an animal’s old hide. Defiantly the old stone and windows stared down at his naked skin, creaking and whispering and Sephiroth opened up to it unafraid, a smile on his lips, the beacon lights of ages old and beaten pain shimmering within his pupils. He opened wide, spreading his arms. Darkness crept over them like water, cascaded down his back and pooled into his fingertips. A coat formed, black leather and silver; boots to firmly stand on the slick ground.

This time Sephiroth came as a conqueror and when he pushed open the iron gates, them shrieking like fortune tellers and the lost garden leaning towards him thorned, tangled and speaking in tongues, he knew he could not lose. In this world, there was nothing stronger than him.

In this world he was god.

~*:*~

It seemed that for all his life Vincent had woken in darkness. 

The air was completely still, like a little bubble of space had been created just for him to sleep in. He took a breath. The soft sound of it seemed out of place, loud like a crack of thunder. He smelled dust and age old silk, cotton falling apart by itself the older it got.

When Vincent had awoke in his coffin every now and again before he had joined such a strange journey to eventually save the world, it had always felt like this, so how could he tell now what age it was or even how long he'd slept? What did it matter to a dead man anyway? For all he knew he might never leave this place again, yet here he was: still alife and aware again. He would never truly find peace: for that he was in league with too powerful creatures. He would have been able to keep himself from this world forever, but never him, never the darkness in his veins: Chaos moved within him, the rough spikes of his consciousness rasping against the inside of his skin as his mind uncurling like a black rose blooming.

Vincent felt what he felt, closer than the horrible dreams he'd suffered; a kind of presence, near enough to seem threatening. He could hear time jitter around his body like air over hot asphalt several rooms away. He listened in to his steps and found they contained the confidence of many lifes and deaths that hadn’t halted them nor changed them. 

Vincent took a breath again submitting to Chaos’ curiosity. It didn’t happen often that something upset the creature.

The lid of his coffin came off easily. the locks hadn’t been replaced. Who would care to anyway, now that Hojo was dead and the rest of the world didn’t fear him? The room greeted him with the same cold and moist aura that had been its very nature when Vincent had laid himself to rest the last time; the same smell of mould, decay and desperation he had come to associate with Shinra manor.

Briefly he wondered how often he had woken - and forgotten about it - before just to float through time and reality down in this basement like a ghost confused by its own existence? 

This time was different, he felt.

This time he hadn’t woken by accident - he had woken because someone was down here that belonged to this world as less as he did. 

~*:*~

A rustling; paper gliding over paper. Within these still and dead walls everything sounded out of place. Sephiroth was halfway through the first diary written by doctor J. Crescent when he heard something in the other room. His turquoise eyes lifted from the pages. He narrowed them slightly; then they returned to the letters. In his mind though he focused his attention to the man that had just appeared in his realm. He retraced his steps as he approached the libaray wondering if he had triggered any alarms when entering the building. He had not seen any and there were no security cameras. Shinra manor was a rotten corpse to this new world, only bones that hadn’t been interred.

There was nothing Sephiroth needed do but wait and so he was not surprised when minutes later he felt the gaze of something living rest on him. Looking up from his reading he found the culprit standing beneath the door frame: a person, tall and pale - unnaturally so. Even his lips were hardly darker than spun silk. His ink-black hair struck him as remarkable, but not any more unusual than his fire-red, disbelieving eyes. He seemed malnourished, but surely that wasn’t strange for somebody who’d been sleeping for a very long time not consuming anything. His body might have just forgotten it was still alive. Sephiroth had sensed him nearby just like Vincent had felt him, but hadn’t been sure who he was. Now it clicked in his mind:

_Vincent Valentine. Gunner. Vessel of the WEAPON Chaos._

This man had been present at his death - his first death, when he hadn’t been used to it yet and hadn’t known the lifestream couldn’t keep him. Every one of them who had been present had imprinted on his consciousness in a way he couldn’t quite replicate, but sometimes he found it interesting to mull over it.

Sephiroth returned to his book. 

“...Go back to sleep.”

He received no reply.

To Vincent, Sephiroth appeared like yet another ghost of which there were so many haunting his dreams. Always when he tried to forget Lucrecia which he dared rarely, her image appeared before him again as a ghost, as an epiphany; sometimes in the form of her son. They were two phantoms meeting in what seemed too small a space to hold them both. Vincent had not seen him this close - not during their fight where Cloud had been present and not anytime before. Sephiroth had remained distant, in both mind and body. 

“I must be dreaming”, the gunman eventually mused.

It wouldn’t be the first time his dreams seemed so vivid that he couldn’t tell if he really woke or if his mind was playing tricks on him. But then, if this was his imagination, just what he wished for, wouldn’t the walls crumble around him and swallow him whole like they always did when he remembered his sins? 

Sephiroth tried to concentrate on the letters before him as if he were the sole addressee of these reports. In a way, he truly was. He was the only person in the world with both the vast skill and education to comprehend the secrets of this library. The Green had taken much from him, but Jenova’s Red had given so much in return. Biology, chemistry, physics - science - what was it to a god if not figures to move in a game of chess? He understood everything he read; he would never be left in the dark again. No knowledge could threaten him and certainly no common man, only a WEAPON maybe...

Even though Valentine was on the other side of the room, it felt like he was close by, reading over his own shoulder. Sephiroth lowered the book only a centimeter, annoyance stealing itself into his tone.

“You are”, he confirmed. “This is not a dream you wish to enter.”

Maybe it was that which made Vincent question the nature of what he saw. The cold, stone walls were still the same, the air was still mouldy and the man still looked at him out of green, unearthly eyes that seemed to go right through his forehead to decipher the thoughts behind.

Quietly and slowly Vincent reached for the Cerberus, the full impact of what was happening descending onto his shoulders.

“You’re here….”

The warm timbre of his voice resounded in the room, but had no power here. They sounded like words spoken into a dead, hollow tree. His mind came into motion, little snippets of memories chasing each other. 

Feathers and tears.

Had he really ever seen tears on Sephiroth’s face or was it just what he’d dreamt of?

Though he had learned to feel the planet and listen to its singsong, mindreading was not a thing the former general could do. It rather were the little shifts in altering the flow of lifestream that could change the weather from a bright day to a dark day, and the little shifts of energy in people around him that alerted Sephiroth to whether they were friendly or an enemy. Sensing the silent threat he finally looked up again. It was then that he decided maybe ignoring the man wouldn’t do.

As the pages of the his book softly closed they clapped in his hands like thunder.

“Are you alright?”, Sephiroth asked softly. “You look like you are about to faint.”

It was so quiet, it felt like dropping his book would cause Sephiroth to unleash an explosion. They stood facing each other, Vincent’s hand still hovering over the Cerberus, Sephiroth unarmed, but unfaced as either hesitated to make the first move until turquoise eyes fell onto Vincent’s gun, then moved up to his red eyes again and the resolve in them broke his own like a child broke a toy it no longer wanted around. The moment was gone, Vincent’s chance to attack vanished like a thin thread of smoke in the air. 

Against his will the gunman cast down his eyes, but behind them Chaos growled in confusion and disbelieve. A simple look at forced them to their knees! His defeat caused Vincent to not notice how Sephiroth gave an approving nod. 

Only as it dissipated did Vncent notice how much tension there had been between them. When he looked up again Sephiroth suddenly didn’t seem intimidating anmore. In fact he looked much like a common man spending some time with his favourite read during a work break. Whatever aura of dread and power had surrounded him was suddenly gone leaving behind an ordinary human. There was no animosity in Sephiroth and that was almost more upsetting than noticing that somewhere through their struggle he had removed his hand from the Cerberus. Vincent understood immediately, that Sephiroth would not be beaten like this, so he coughed into a fist and made the best of it.

“You are alive again?”, he asked, far from calm but maybe a little more sober.

Sephiroth only smiled about a secret joke it seemed. The expression caused yet another change in his appearance.

“I suppose I am”, the former general replied. 

“Yes,” he mused softly. “I am a version of alive.” 

Sephiroth cast the book in his hands a glance, then put it down on the desk nearby. A cloud of dust erupted from the wood.

“I should put you to sleep again before you collapse.”

None of it was communicated with his voice,, but Vincent felt there was a threat in his words which he didn’t dare test. Vincent Valentine was not a stupid man. He took a cautious step back, but in doing so he caught sight of the book on the desk and it stirred a strange wonder within him:

“What are you reading?”

Where Sephiroth made a step forward he made one back. He was too experienced to believe the man - almost a god himself - was anything less than dangerous. If he decided to kill him he would be dead in seconds and he would likely not get another chance to draw his weapon.

“You….come here to read?”

For the littlest moment a disturbance flickered through Sephiroth’s lifestream eyes and then was gone again.

“You come here to sleep?”, he returned the question a bit too quickly, mimicking the exact same tone to his defense. It was soon followed by an upwards turn of a corner of his lips to curb its sharp edge. The smile by habit seemed cruel, but didn’t hold anger. Sephiroth was mocking him.

He looked down, his fingers caressed the book cover as if it was a long-time-no-see friend whose hand he took and stroked. 

“Surely the activity of reading in a place like this,” he mused, “weights the same as sleeping in here.” 

Begrudgingly Vincent had to admit that was true. Slowly but surely his heartbeat was normalizing although it was still times too slow for a human; with it all of his functions returned. He felt more attached now to this world, less like plucked from a daydreamer’s fantasy.

“And you care to enlighten me as to why you are among the living again? Is it Cloud you’re after? Is it not a tiresome game you play, I wonder?”

It was strange feeling your own heartbeat after it’s been gone for so long, he wondered more how it felt for Sephiroth though, recreating your very body from scratch? How had he done it? Had they missed something important when Cloud had defeated Sephiroth on top of Shinra headquarters? Rebirthing could hardly feel like transforming, like anything he himself did, Vincent thouht then, but maybe it was just as painful.

“What’s that book?”, he asked again, the question already holding an accusation.

His gaze returned to the item, then met the other man’s eyes, this time more secure than before. Sephiroth noticed the change in him and the book was savely tucked away at his side. With amazement Sephiroth noticed he considered the knowledge in these books his own, a birthright, although they were only words written on yellow paper, most of their texts rushed and with poor handwriting. Sephiroth could remember nothing of what these books told. He was as good as a god; he owned the world and for a time this library was his most sacred belonging.

“Why care for a diary?”, Sephiroth asked and flashed Vincent the cover of this book. His smile faded. 

“This entry just happens to be about… you.”

If Vincent had been at ease before, that attitude faded awfully quickly. His shoulders tensed.

“Put the book down!”, he didn’t say, but _order._

This man…. he had no right! Nobody had the right to read about him or anything that had been done to him!

Sephiroth watched his rising anger with interest.

“I have it put down,” he said. He wasn’t reading any more now; he’d stopped that activity, but nevertheless he left the book opened on the desk insinuating he would not be deterred from doing as he pleased later by neither man nor monster.

“Calm. Unless you wish to fight, but I assure you, you will lose that battle, so go back to sleep and leave me to read. It will be the best for both of us”, Sephiroth advised sternly. “I shan’t disclose the secrets of your existence to anyone.” 

His clear warning was either lost or ignored though, because Vincent stepped forward, his expression threatening. He held out his hand as he moved closer never leaving the former general out of sight. Although his voice was hard now, the fact he stopped in front of Sephiroth - asking, not taking what he wanted - betrayed his efforts and only served to prove: Vincent Valentine was a solicitant here, nothing more. 

“Give me the book!”

Sephiroth didn’t even blink. 

“You will not take these writings; neither this book nor any of the others.”

Vincent lunged, reaching forward and drawing the Cerberus in one single, skillful move. There was no transition between the moment where his fingers closed around the cover and the moment when Sephiroth struck out and the former Turk had to eat the floor. A scuffle followed, violent but short-lived. A moment later the SOLDIER had a firm grasp on his clawed hand brutally twisting it onto Vincent’s back until he could hear the other gasp in pain and protest. A knee landed heavily on his neck effectively pinning him face down.

With calm derision Sephiroth took back his belongings. The book was put on the floor ten centimeters from Vincent’s nose where the gunner could see it, but not touch it. He struggled once more - he would not die so easily - but Sephiroth was strong as a Behemoth! His own black hair fell into his face and robbed him of clear vision. Any moment now he’d feel the cold kiss of a katana enter his back, he was sure. From this he would not escape anymore, he realized. Knowledge held some peace for him though and eventually he accepted his defeat. Speaking was hard when one could barely breathe, but he still he forced through his teeth:

“Go on; do it! You are probably the only one that can! I guess Cloud will dislike hearing of this though.”

He could feel Sephiroth’s green eyes burn into the back of his head, predatory and superior as he held him down. There was something unsettling about hearing his voice, but not seeing the lips forming the words - it seemed there was no way of telling what was happening inside his head that way. They said Sephiroth had lost it at Nibelheim and the way he spoke to the man he had just brutalized like one would scold a disobedient child seemed to prove the rumours better than any meteor called onto the planet:

“You started,” Sephiroth pointed out, soft and low.

“Do you intend to tell Cloud on me, about keeping you from snatching my book? I did not hold you for a _tattletale._ ”

Helpless on the floor Vincent was too aware of his dire situation, but still...

“None of these books are yours!”, he snapped.

He made another attempt at freeing himself that was thoroughly thwarted. Some of the dust around got into his eyes. Once he realized Sephiroth WASN’T going to kill him immediately for whatever reason, but wasn’t going to stop humiliating him either, he resorted to a warning:

“Let go!”

Although no part of Sephiroth’s hands touched his skin, the areas beneath his clothing burned like fire. He’d never been close to that man, never even thought there was any chance of physical contact, in battle or otherwise. Right now, all he saw was a cascade of silver hair tickling his cheeks smelling of roses and vanilla. It was too strange and unreal and before he could avoid it he remembered Lucrecia who was alive in those documents before his nose and how her hair would be the same length. The unwanted association caused anger to well up inside his chest again; his cheeks took on a faint rosy tint that not only stemmed from the effort it took him to struggle against Sephiroth’s hold with renewed vigor.

“I thought someone like you had at least an idea of honour! Let go this instant, this isn’t a fair fight!”, he snarled.

Sephiroth’s reply was quick and thrice as hefty like a sudden, unexpected punch to the nose: _“Calm down!”_

The order boomed in his head; a sign that the SOLDIER had had enough. He would not hurt Valentine if the other was civil, but respectless action should be discouraged immediately. 

Vincent’s resistance died, making way for surprised paralysis.

For a while there was silence. The coldness from the stone floor beneath him seeped through the red cape into his body.

“Cease your aggression and I may let you go”, he heard uttered to the back of his head. Vincent didn’t reply, but when Sephiroth met no further resistance he put one foot on the diary, then removed his knee from Valentine’s neck. The man coughed. He could have thrown him off now, but he didn’t, so Sephiroth deemed matters settled. He kept a hand in his neck for a moment longer to assert his position, then eventually let go rising to his full height.

“I have no wish to harm you or engage with you. I wish to read quietly, if you’ll let me.” 

Vincent rolled around, one hand on his sore throat and as their eyes met, for a moment nothing less than hell burned in the shining red rings of his retinae. For a second, Sephiroth saw what was trapped behind them; the pure, undiluted hatred of Chaos piercing him like a spear of ice. The creature was aware and watching, recognizing him even through its confined state within its vessel and the protomateria.

In that moment, Sephiroth who had become more powerful than anything else on this planet, learned that still there was one thing he couldn’t control. He slaughtered dragons with one strike, moved planets with a gesture and forced warriors to their knees with mere words, but this creature wouldn’t yield to neither pain nor death nor god. Chaos would die if it only meant taking him with it. Given the chance, it would rip him apart. The realization of its raw power filled Sephiroth with an excitement he hadn’t felt for a long time on this boring, wretched planet and he allowed it to become visible as an incandescent spark in his own eyes.

Vincent retreated to safety.

Sephiroth let him. 

How meager that man suddenly looked, just a shell so far beneath both him and the WEAPON. For a brief second he seemed little more than a cautious animal with ruffled fur than a human and Sephiroth wondered how he had wasted so much time on him. 

Vincent brushed the book on the floor with one more envious and longing look, then decided it was out of reach.

“Do as you wish!”, he growled. “You shan’t find much joy in these books: all they are is blood and despair on pages upon pages!”

And Sephiroth nodded satisfiedly:

“I’ve not come to find happiness. I’ve come to learn of my past and I expect to find nothing less there but terror and sorrow.”

Once upon a time he had left behind his humanity in exchange for freedom and there had to have been a good reason for that, because Sephiroth feared little and loathed a lot and whatever could have birthed the wish in him to become a god of wrath, it had destroyed his old self and what else was there to ruin a man like him than blood, despair and unimaginable pain? Even though he barely remembered, the past was a cold touch around his neck and if he had to he would let it choke him to rebirth again like he always did: bathed in tears and fire and hatred far worse than that of any Chaos, because Chaos was born for that but Sephiroth had chosen it and there was an internecine might in willful decisions like this: to burn this planet, maybe he needed to burn first. If Vincent thought he would shy back from the inevitable, then he was wrong because Sephiroth never stopped. Cloud knew that, because Cloud felt like him. He thought like him although he would never admit it and that was the blonde swordsman’s appeal and what none of the others had ever dared to see. In a way, they all were friends with him, even Vincent Valentine who right now was thinking about the best way to eradicate him.

Sephiroth didn’t mind. All the world was his enemy and he'd been at war for all of his life. He would not lose.

A gloved hand reached for the shelf and the next book, paying no mind to the one he had just defended from the gunman’s access. The paper rustled within the silence of the room as the spirits from days long past awoke and rose from the pages to find a new home in his wake, joining those that already haunted him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fanfiction has a lot of warnings, but to be honest, while at least a mention of everything in these warnings will be in this fic, to what extent it will exist is still not clear. It might be I have to add an additional warning somewhere along the road.
> 
> This fanfiction actually has a large (and amazing!) soundtrack to go with it. The tracklist will be released with each chapter. The first would be Susanne Sundfor: 'White Foxes'. Vincent's POV, obviously. The meaning of some of these lyrics will probably only become clear with time. Since I'm a huge music lover, obviously I will be excited about your opinions! 8'D


	3. God Eat God

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we finally get this started and hell breaks lose - quite literally.

Vincent didn’t go back to sleep that day. Chaos didn’t wish to leave; the entity was driven by a violent urge, now that the Calamity was so near and even if Vincent never listened to him, this time maybe they shared at least the need to watch, to know where the threat was and what it was doing. At least that was what Vincent told himself. The only logical course of action would have been to inform the others, somebody, but whenever he was close to making the decision, something inside him disagreed. It was a chanting, a chorus of past voices in his mind singing to a tune not even Chaos could mock and they all sang the same thing: he had a son. While Vincent hadn’t known Sephiroth while he had been still alive, now he was here. His steps disturbed the decades old dust of the mansion and his memory; his voice disrupted the orchestra of nothingness that had reigned here supreme for so many years. He was a phantom that had haunted this house and all that belonged to it since its creation and Vincent, however much he hated it or even because of it, had always been a part of Shinra manor. Maybe it wasn’t only blood connecting him and Sephiroth, maybe it was an idea of sin too, one that one of them regretted and the other indulged. Maybe watching was all Vincent could do to learn at least what his son had once been; maybe watching was all he wanted to catch a glimpse of humanity in an inhuman thing. Learning about Sephiroth seemed much like learning about himself. There was a moral there and Vincent was compelled to find it.

In truth though his silent watch turned out to be a hideously boring duty because the general never seemed to pause in his endeavours to decimate the amount of unabsorbed data in the basement. Vincent could, but didn’t need to eat and it seemed to prove true for the silver SOLDIER as well, because he consumed nothing and if he even breathed the gunman couldn’t clearly tell. Vincent made it a habit of sitting in the same room as him at the desk cleaning his gun, reading as well, sometimes he just closed his eyes listening in to all the faint and strange sounds the building had to offer. If Sephiroth wanted to kill him, he would have done it by now, he was sure and if he reconsidered then a gun wouldn’t be much help against him. All the protection he could rely on lurked within his blood stream in the shape of Chaos.

But Sephiroth wouldn’t mind him much and so Vincent had taken to watching not only his activities, but the man himself; the movement of his hair when he stepped forward along the large shelves of books or the way his green, dragon-like eyes scanned the pages faster than most people would have been able to. Vincent was a fast reader himself, he thought he could match his speed, but only with trouble. The way Sephiroth walked.... none of it seemed decidedly god-like. It did not even seem otherworldly like people had described Chaos to him. Sephiroth could have been a common man with the only thing unusual about him his ethereal beauty. 

Vincent was convinced that Hojo, during the creation of what was to be his only son and greatest triumph, had wanted to make sure he would be a remarkable individual. That had been long before the extent of Sephiroth’s power or even otherness could have been fathomed. Hojo had been a blind fool as much was sure, but he’d known how greatness worked and he’d correctly assumed a person people looked up to, a person they would later connect with him and his scientific triumph- as he had called the boy - needed to be a poster boy. Sephiroth was, in more ways than one, the perfect creature and it was exactly the reason why he’d never found much joy in life.

Contrary to Vincent, Sephiroth wasn’t plagued by any such thoughts. After the rejection of his outstretched hand he had expected Vincent to leave. A minor disturbance like his would send the WRO his way, possibly Cloud - he wasn’t really against meeting Cloud again. After everything that had happened he somehow still failed to regard him a threat, though an undisturbed read would likely be impossible then. Unexpectedly though Vincent Valentine remained in close proximity. Sephiroth cared little for his motives, but every once in a while he felt his red gaze rest on him, so he assumed the man was watching, gathering information maybe; about him and what he was doing. He had been a Turk after all. Since he wasn’t a bother he soon came to ignore him. Over time, Sephiroth grew used to him. 

He read through Dr. Crescent’s volumes, and then started on Hojo’s diaries, but after half an entry he gave up, because the clinical style of writing sparked so much hatred in him. The fire roared in his chest but he swallowed it down which felt akin to swallowing vomit. 

He started on Gast’s diaries instead and read them again. They were more personal.

Usually he would have sat down on the chair in the middle of the room, but he did not ask his companion to move. Sephiroth read where he stood only slightly changing posture every once in a while to be more comfortable. He flipped pages endlessly, absorbed by the woes and enthusiastic eruptions during the long process of research. 

Halfway through Gast’s series of diaries, Sephiroth began to walk. He walked back and forth, then walked circles around Vincent’s chair causing the man to give him sidewards glances every time his leather coat almost touched him.

From Gast’s he soon arrived at Ifalna’s diaries which were akin to reading a scientific variety of fairy tales. She wrote mainly about plants and ecosystems, Lifestream and Ancients. The margins of the pages were filled with drawings of whatever flowers or items she thought worthy of notice and her handwriting was clearest readable. It conjured up the image of a happy, bright woman who had more love to give than she could hold in herself. Sephiroth found that he remembered nothing about her and started wondering if he had ever met her as a child and if she had maybe been the one that had taught him how to braid his hair. The stream had taken much of him, too much.

At a whim, when Vincent was in the process of cleaning his gun again, Sephiroth stopped his walk right behind him. He lifted a gloved hand to his own lips and pressed his fist to his mouth suppressing a soft chuckle. He hadn’t noticed it was the first time since his rebirth he felt genuinely amused until Vincent stilled upon the sound. This part of writing was so random, so light-hearted, so...

“Ifalna writes that you like lasagna.”

Vincent, at first said nothing, but the rag he’d just used to polish the barrel in his hands paused.

“Does she now?”, he questioned after a while.

Not that it were untrue.

Once upon a time he’d loved the stuff, now he could barely remember how it tasted. Chaos lived on entirely different things than what humans consumed and once the need to eat was gone, appetite followed suit rather quickly. After a while Vincent took up his work again as if nothing had happened.

“I heard you were very proud of your hair”, he retaliated.

“Not that it’s surprising. Strange for a man though - maybe. They say you refused to have it cut when you were seven.”

He could hear him move, but couldn’t see his expression changing. Sephiroth took a little to reply giving away his unwillingness to do so.

“At seven I learned that men from Wutai cease to cut their hair after they suffer the loss of a beloved.”

In a determined gesture the former general lifted his book to continue reading, but found himself staring over Vincent’s shoulder to the many parts of the gun instead. Suddenly he wondered why the man was still here - he wasn’t quite human anymore. Maybe he considered himself a guardian of some sort? A keeper of the mansion and its secrets much like Sephiroth himself was a keeper? Vincent was… twenty-seven years old, he knew, but only in appearance. He would have to be about 60 now, possibly older. Since nobody who knew had died and joined the red stream, Sephiroth had no way of knowing. It bothered him, he noticed. If Vincent was that old, he would have had to be a Turk at about the time he had been born. Suddenly Sephiroth realized that for all he knew, Vincent could have known him! He had been involved in the Jenova project, had he not? The scriptures said so although they only mentioned him as a side note. Was it the reason Vincent stayed here? To keep an eye on a project he’d always been curious about? What followed was an almost magnetic urge to hit himself over the head for being so blind. Sephiroth narrowed his eyes.

“Maybe I wanted to please Professor Hojo by finally being different than others. Maybe I mourned my mother who I never met. Maybe, at that age, I lost someone. Pick your reason.”

He couldn’t quite ban the reproachful tone from his voice and possibly should have expected the answer.

“I didn’t think you would respect Wutaian tradition”, Vincent wondered turning the gun in his hands and inspecting his own skillful work, “since obviously you slayed nearly half of them.”

“It was not my-!”

Sephiroth stared down at him. His jaw clenched. With two large steps he made his way around the desk to demand attention simply with his tall figure. The sudden movement made the gunman look up.

“That decision was made before I was employed as a weapon!”, Sephiroth clarified icily.

Oh, it had not been his choice to slay Wutai’s populace and eradicate their culture, but when had his opinion ever mattered especially at the age he had been sent into battle? One half of them had considered him a child too inexperienced to have one, the other had seen him as a tool. At that age, maybe he had been both. Sephiroth had earned his rank in that war. He was responsible for killing many simply because that was the most effective way to win the war and he had known that already, but half? No.

For a while they stared at each other; Sephiroth with eyes the colour of frozen lakes, Vincent with a gaze of slowly, smoldering coal. It almost seemed like he wouldn’t grace him with a retort of his own, but when he spoke again he sounded different. He returned to his gun on the desk, his hands roaming over the different parts he could surely identify even with his eyes closed.

“That was uncalled for”, he admitted. Even his voice seemed slow like flowing magma and it had about the same unwavering clarity. “I apologize.”

The weapon before him was as clean as it would get. It was the third time he polished it and he probably should stop it. His hands, though, craved something to do lest he wanted them to express what he really felt.

“You remind me of your mother - I suppose I don’t like it. Are you still after destroying the world, Sephiroth? You’ve read a lot of books in these past days, you….”, his lips pressed together into a thin line “...should know by now why that might bother me more than it could ever bother Cloud.”

Some of those files were about him, after all. About what Hojo had done to him. Surely the man had come across them already: the creation of a beast. 

Vincent knew for sure he wasn’t mentioned as Sephiroth’s father in any of those books. If anyone had had certainty about this, then it had been Hojo and the man had made sure nothing would taint his purest creation. Whether one was true or the other, in another world, under different circumstances, Sephiroth would have been Vincent’s family - his true family, not a man he barely knew. Maybe not his only son, but not any less loved than his siblings. When he’d been alive Vincent had never doubted that one day he would have children, maybe a house of his own where they could play and grow up sheltered. He would have had a wife - or maybe a husband, who knew? - and he would have quit his job as a Turk for something more family friendly. But that’s not how things had turned out and there was no going back in time, only living with what he’d been given. Vincent liked to think that he’d finally adjusted to this.

“There is someone in my head that would like to meet you. He’s currently crying and bawling in anger about not being let near your throat and I believe you wouldn’t appreciate his welcome hug. You assume right: his passivity in this is only because I don’t indulge him. It seems I am a threat to the planet like he’s assumed when we were introduced to each other several decades back, don’t you think?”

At first the WEAPON had fought relentlessly against his mind and body. It had tried to break its prison and fulfill its function and had it not been for the materia it surely would have succeeded. Protecting the planet was its first and foremost motivation and that would never change. By allowing Sephiroth even one step on Gaia’s soil, how deep a crime was that really?

Sephiroth leaned back from the desk, but his eyes still shot arrows at him.

“Likely,” he replied shortly, answering only the gunman’s last question out of politeness. What did the Turk have to know about his goals anyway? He turned his attention away from Valentine, and back to the book. He resumed his walking, his calm and slow pacing that took his mind off everything but the letters before him. If he looked like a circling vulture, then he did not intend to. 

His effort was foiled from the start.

You remind me of your mother, Valentine had said, and those words echoed inside his head like a song on repeat. It was much better than the alternative of looking like his father.

You remind me of your mother.

It was probably the hair. Definitely the length of the silver hair. And maybe it was the shape of his face, or maybe his mannerisms too he hoped, that reminded of his human mother the name of Lucrecia. Jenova, too, was his mother, but he knew more about her than this so called Lucrecia. Hojo had died and joined his stream, but even his knowledge had been limited and it seemed there were no shared memories involving her and the son she’d birthed. Hojo, however, had provided one memory he cherished: she had cried for him. His human mother had fought for him. Possibly in all of his life nobody had ever fought for him out of pure love, only his human mother had. Thanks to Hojo he also knew that she hadn’t succeeded and he had never met her. It was as sweet a memory as it was bitter. 

Sephiroth smiled to himself as he caressed the book in his hands. 

He flipped back to Ifalna’s diary entry about Lucrecia, and glanced over it again. 

Silence ruled over the room for another few hours. They did not make eye contact, but Sephiroth glanced over to Vincent a few more times. He grew restless and read faster. He even tried Hojo’s protocols again, but those provided no personal notes on his human mother at all. Sephiroth was encountering a problem: he knew about his heritage and the experiments that had made him in detail, but none of it helped in deciphering why he seemed to be unable to reach his goals. It wasn’t a lack of power on his part, he was sure. Something was missing, something he felt like he ought to know - something he had forgotten! There was so much he had forgotten, but with certain clarity he knew none if it was to be found in books.

Frustrated and sure now that whatever knowledge he needed was not written on paper, Sephiroth put the documents down on the shelf and walked towards the center of the room. He stood before the gunner’s desk and clicked his heels together like he had learned a long time ago.

“I want you to tell me about my mother and how I am like her.”

Meanwhile, in his boredom, Vincent had picked up some of the books too. When Sephiroth approached he looked up at him, quietly turning a page without spending attention where it would lead him. His answer was simple.

“No.”

His gaze returned to the letters in his hands, but the surprised expression on Sephiroth’s face didn’t slip his attention. He’d let go of Lucrecia and he didn’t wish to raise her from the dead again by dressing her into painfully beautiful words. This was all she’d left him and he’d been allowed to keep of her: painfully beautiful words.

Sephiroth stared down at him like a man who wasn’t used to being disobeyed. He pressed his lips together until they turned white. He seemed to grow a little taller, the shadows a little darker, and the lines in his face a little deeper. 

“Wrong answer, Valentine. I want you to try again.”

Vincent threw him a glance that contained the hatred of Chaos; for a brief second there seemed to be no barrier between the man and the monster. Sephiroth wasn’t the only one who could pull that little trick.

“I said no.”

Sephiroth could kill him, Vincent was sure, but he wouldn’t stay dead for long and it would only serve to unleash the WEAPON within his body. Not even Vincent would be able to hold him back then. Of course he didn’t doubt Sephiroth had the means to put up a fight that would incinerate more than the nearby village, but in the end: if he died for real or not made no difference. He’d walked through death once and it had settled inside him. The fierceness of the threat was one to be reckoned with and any other man than Sephiroth would have stepped back and retreated to another room or perhaps another village. 

For a few minutes that seemed to stretch for eternity they glared at each other. Leather creaked as the former general crossed his arms in front of his chest like he had used to when he had still been with SOLDIER. Valentine was serious. 

“I wonder if you actually have information to share”, he growled.

If Vincent was here to play with his mind, then Sephiroth would make sure he wouldn’t enjoy that game very much.

Vincent merely shrugged.

“I wonder about that too.”

What information about Lucrecia did he have that almost-a-god-Sephiroth could be interested in? Certainly he would dislike hearing about how her hazel eyes reminded him, a Turk, that there still was some good in the world or how she never buttoned up her lab coat. He remembered how her eyes had been glowing with excitement whenever her experiments succeeded or she found something new in her data, almost like they had a mako glow of their own. She’d ran through the hallways of the mansion then, forgetting completely about her carefully learned manners or that she would disturb Hojo at his work. She had been beautiful then and her lab coat had looked like the wings of a swan flapping behind her. No, these weren’t the things almost-a-god-Sephiroth would be interested in for sure.

The man in question only narrowed his green eyes and issued a cold-hearted: “Fine.”

He turned sharply and as he left the room, his heavy black coat blew up too, but rather like the wings of a crow than those of a swan. He walked down the corridor hastily in his anger. Valentine’s answer told him one thing: he knew about his mother! He knew and he refused to share! But he would solve this riddle of Vincent Valentine! 

He stepped through the door that lead to the laboratory, and slammed it shut with more force than he’d intended to. There was a blast that echoed in both rooms, then there was silence. In this separate laboratory, Sephiroth immediately walked to Hojo’s immaculate desk, and slammed his fists down on the surface. Dust blew up in a thick cloud as the metal gained two fist-shaped dents. He bowed his head down, and let his hair fall past his face. Like that he stood for a while listening in to his own laboured breathing.

Calm now. This is not something to be worked up about. 

But there seemed a fire in his head that raged and raged, and the more Sephiroth thought about the information that seemed to be closed up inside Valentine, the angrier he became. The only way to quell this rage was to satisfy his curiosity; if Vincent wasn’t going to give him what he wanted willingly, he would make him! But he couldn’t simply control him like he did with Cloud and Chaos was an obstacle to be considered too: the WEAPON would protect its body and Vincent Valentine with it, except… his mind grinded to a halt. Within minutes the cool, aloof calmness of the strategist he had been descended on him and critical thinking took over. Oh, maybe it was all very easy, he suddenly thought.

All Vincent Valentine needed to do was die.

All information he had would then go straight to the red stream; he would simply take him before the green could. He removed his hands from the desk examining the marks he had left tracing them with curious digits. 

They all had bowed to his power and Vincent would not be an exception. Vincent would yield. 

He would make it so.

 

In the library, Vincent closed his eyes and directed his attention inwards. The air vibrated with the lingering energy of Sephiroth’s wrath. He might look like an ordinary man, but he wasn’t and would never again be. Chaos could see and feel it in him: the energetic information of the entity that made him so very different from everything and everyone else on Gaia. Even with a wall between them the creature could feel his lifestream swirl and surge with anger. For a while Vincent listened in to the turmoil in the air and hoped Chaos would get a glimpse of the former general’s intentions, but although the WEAPON was just as interested as him about what had upset the man like this, he found no clear cues.

Vincent put the book back into the shelf.

It annoyed him greatly, but he felt worry. He was well protected thanks to the WEAPON in his body, yet angering the man wasn’t wise. When Sephiroth didn’t return for a while, his worry only grew and the flickering light of the basement didn’t serve to calm him. The wiring was old here; the house itself didn’t wish to return to the living.

He found Sephiroth in the next room, eyes like pools of mako. The light had given out completely here save for one neon light spilling its sickly hues over the assembled surgery tools. Noone had touched them for decades after Shinra had abandoned the house and left it to rot. They’d left them all to rot: Genesis, Angeal, Sephiroth, Cloud and Zack - himself and so many more. People Vincent barely knew and only heard of from reports and stories. He didn’t like this room; it held fast to his suffering like a nightmare eater to a tasty tragedy.

Sephiroth didn’t look at him. He seemed just as lost here, like only a seven year old boy finding his life was owned to be sold to the highest bidder.

“They believed me to be an Ancient. I was supposed to find the Promised Land, but when they found out I couldn’t they taught me to kill instead. It seems to be the only thing that still justified my existence, all that I ever learned...”, his voice was dull and monotonous like the voice of a man who had relived the same old scenario over and over again.

“What a mistake that was.”

When he looked up there was a fire in his gaze, one Vincent had only heard of in tales uttered by witnesses of the greatest tragedy to ever strike the town of Nibelheim. He drew the Cerberus as Sephiroth tilted his head, a predatory, calculating stare concentrating on the man in the red cape the likes of which Chaos was capable of.

“I’ll make it quick. You won’t suffer.”

A glow surrounded his hand, raced up his arm; Masamune, the fabled blade, appearing out of nowhere. Vincent fired. The blade moved fast as lightning deflecting all three of his bullets in a single swipe sending them into the walls. One of them hit a lamp in shower of sparks, then dug into the ground. Sephiroth ducked to attack. Vincent shot again but hit nothing. Suddenly his hands were empty and hands wrapped around his chest and forehead like a vice. How the Enemy of the World had gotten behind him so fast was a mystery to him; one he didn’t need to think about for very long, it seemed.

“You can die too, Vincent Valentine”, the silver man said next to his ear. “It only takes a god to decide on it.”

He watched with merciless calm as the blade sank through his back and pierced his chest through the heart. The materia he harboured gave way to the steel easily. Vincent screamed; a wave of blood choking the sound but Sephiroth didn’t let go until Masamune had impaled him entirely. Then he let go.

The gunman fell to his knees clutching his chest, a dark spot quickly soaking his red cape. He screamed again, a howl of agony and for a moment Sephiroth thought he had promised too much. Instead of shielding the wound to heal it, Valentine started to claw at it, tearing through the leather of his attire until his nails were ripping at his own flesh to pull the searing heart out of it. Whatever pain he was in, it was apparently worse than being stabbed to death.

“You’re so damn stupid!”, he managed through blood-red teeth until he, quite literally, burst open. Chaos rose from his corpse like a nightmare dressed in flesh and blood. Horns split his skull like shards from within; wings tore open his back reforming his skeletal structure with a sickening sound. The WEAPON shook off its human skin like a snake shedding its old hide. As it turned, its searing yellow eyes transfixing its natural enemy, there was nothing in it but the pure, mad violence it had gathered over the course of several days in which it had been unable to help it. Chaos flexed his claws, each as long as a knife and twice as sharp. 

Sephiroth wisely retreated, a smile on his lips, the steps of his boots on the stone floor a light-footed dance.

Although only the size of Vincent Valentine, Chaos was monumental in its power and it was determined to tear him apart. There was no hesitation and no scheming - the WEAPON attacked with brute force, its powerful roar rattling the walls of the building. Sephiroth answered by spreading his own wing, sign of his heritage and source of his power. It emerged naturally, the effort it took to make it visible only as small as raising an arm.

Sephiroth turned.

Claws sweeped at his legs missing them by inches. Sephiroth had no desire to destroy the supportive structure of the house - contrary to Valentine it was his worst fear to be locked up below ground with no means to escape a coffin. His inhuman speed came in handy now. He passed the hallway; climbed the ladder at the end of the tunnel in one go. The beast was at his wingtip, its sulfuric gaze lighting the darkness as he looked behind his back. He jumped and left the narrow staircase behind half by feet, half flying.

Faster!

Claws tickled his ankle and blood trickled down his left leg.

_Faster!_

He threw open the door so hard its hinges cracked as it thundered against the wall. Behind it was the second floor bedroom hiding the entrance to the basement. They left it behind. While Sephiroth gracefully avoided contact with furniture, Chaos had no such qualms of hurting himself. Tables and chairs shattered as he barrel through them in mad rage, a golden claw hit the doorframe where Sephiroth’s head had been a second ago sending splinters like shrapnel through the room. The beast was faster than he had expected!

It outran him in the hall leading from one end of the mansion to the other, surrounding him with a flutter of its wings and cutting off his escape. Crimson wings fanned out in a threat as the WEAPON roared at him. Sephiroth lifted his blade. He would not be herded like a sheep! Mako green eyes darted from the great window to the stairwell. He bolted forward, surprising the creature with his boldness. It was a good plan and it worked, but he only narrowly escaped some bleeding scratches down his back. There was no time to retaliate as he made his way to the window beneath which the garden lay.

It opened only reluctantly, spitefully creaking at him as he pulled at its lock. Sephiroth jumped, his silver hair following the rest of him like a silken flag. He rolled over on the roof, fell several meters and landed on both feet.

Chaos showed none such grace. 

He simply burst through the whole window, the closed part of it too. Shards rained down into the grass as for a moment the WEAPON cowered on the ledge of the roof like a Nibel-Dragon ready to breath fire and damnation. 

This was where he wanted Chaos! 

The blade in his hands shimmered with cruel delight as he readied it for battle, giving only a quick, testing shake to his injured leg to see how well he could use it. The result was satisfying.

Chaos dropped onto the man below like a throwing knife onto a canary bird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeaaah, I'm not dead. Fight, my minions, fiiiight! (ง’̀-‘́)ง
> 
> I will use the notes section to answer questions regarding this fic in case there are any, although Vincent, Chaos and Sephiroth still have their own blogs on tumblr which you can of course use to pester them. 
> 
> [Chaos](http://ask-chaos-incarnate.tumblr.com/) by me  
> [Vincent](http://ic-vincent-valentine.tumblr.com/) by me  
> [Sephiroth](http://rp-sephiroth.tumblr.com/) by goddamnitaisha


	4. Becoming human

Sephiroth attacked. One powerful strike brought the Masamune up aiming for the creature’s throat. Chaos landed claws forward in the grass coughing and spitting blood that seeped from a deep cut into his lungs. A shiver went through his body; the large wings pulled closer then spread in a display of rage and power as he recovered. When he removed his claw the wound was merely a smear of red.

Sephiroth smiled.

Chaos lunged at him.

The blade in his hands was a bright crescent moon as it shot towards the beast’s flank. It was stopped with bare hands. They were chopped nearly in half before a barrier of darkness sprang from Chaos’ palms engulfing the metal. 

A quick step aside saved Sephiroth from a hard hit that ripped his leather coat as if it were a paper tissue. It was a good hit that made him hiss in pain as it tore into the outer layer of the muscle. Chaos’ claws were longer on his left hand where the golden gauntlet had fused with his flesh, Sephiroth noticed: he would have to keep it in mind.

He turned in a spiral, his reflexes fast and daunting. A spell formed around his hands and arms following his movements like a trail of fire as the magic sprang to life tickling over his fingers bursting into a swirling ball of heat and light. Chaos was fast and powerful, but his large wings caught the air and made him less agile than the swordsman. Sephiroth let the spell loose; it burst from his palm like a torrent of heat and hit the beast in the back. The WEAPON roared in anger as the smell of burned skin rose to the sky.

“The past three days I’ve been reading up on you and Valentine,” Sephiroth laughed at it. “I read everything known about you; how you work and how you are defeated.”

He would have to end this fight quickly, Sephiroth knew, before the WEAPON could use its true power on him. The significant difference between Chaos and any other foe on the planet was that he had magic at his command that could get dangerous even to him. Its negative lifestream was unique, an all consuming void that would swallow him whole if given the slightest chance. Like Omega it had a soul of its own, but it was also a vessel and an anchor to the corrupted energy Gaia couldn’t keep. As their guardian and keeper Chaos reigned supreme over his pandemonium of nothingness and decay. His darkness was a might that could not be counteracted once it took hold; one touch with it could break down his red lifestream and both Sephiroth and the beast knew it. It was what it based its attack on, Sephiroth figured, as the great wings spread and Chaos’ feet left the ground. Its wingbeats ruffled his hair and tore at his coat. The Masamune was only a shield as long as it could reach, the swordsman thought with concern.

Sephiroth sweeped at its feet, but Chaos was all but dumb and refused to be hit again. Lightfootedly it pulled its limbs close, then pushed against the blade to jump fully leaving the ground. Sephiroth kept an eye on the creature that rose like a hellish demon. Black lifestream formed behind it like a trail of smoke engulfing its wings and washing over its skin like poisonous mist until its eyes seemed the only thing glowing like the maws of a two-headed dragon right before breathing fire. It circled like a vulture, hands bent like the claws of a bird of prey seeking for a weak spot. A blinding yet dark light signalled the summoning of the Death Penalty in his right hand.

Sephiroth sensed the incoming attack and brought his sword up, the broad side facing the sky. With one thought he erected a barrier just in time.

Chaos attacked: one shot; a second one. They were rays of nothingness that hit his magic wall so hard he felt a considerable pressure in his joints. They were powerful; it took two hits until his barrier shattered. He deflected the third shot with a turn of his wrist; where it hit the ground the grass wilted and withered leaving ashes and naked earth. Chaos didn’t intend to let him recover sending more rays of energy his way from all angles as he picked up speed forcing Sephiroth to defend rather than retaliate. Their quarrel turned into a dance, turned into flashes of silver as Masamune spun in his hands. Sephiroth’s footwork was flawless, years of training from a young age would never be forgotten no matter what other powers he had at his command. The steady rain from the past days though had left the ground slippery and soft and eventually he misstepped; a small stone hit with the underside of his boot. A flash as a searing shot of energy cut off the edge of his hair. Stunned silence as it hit the ground treaded into the dirt by the next of Sephiroth’s steps making up for his mistake.

The next attack of Chaos was sent back at it with such brutal force it hit the beast’s wing and evaporated into thin air. His own lifestream couldn’t harm the WEAPON, Sephiroth saw confirmed.

Well, he could keep it up for a good while longer, but it would get them nowhere for sure. A new strategy was in order and Chaos did seem to think so too choosing the roof of Shinra manor to land and roar at him. Its claws dug into the shingles raining splinters down onto the neglected garden. Sephiroth hurled a lightning spell its way and another right after. One of the mansion’s towers fell victim to their quarrel scattering bricks like teardrops. The WEAPON merely slipped away once again using its wings to take to the sky. It seemed like it was mocking him with the way it moved as if it was light as a feather, more than air keeping its body airborne. It aimed and shot at him again Sephiroth countering the attack with an ice spell. The water evaporating immediately upon contact with Chaos’ energy and took his sight, but blindly Sephiroth fired two more spells and with satisfaction he listened to their impact. This time he’d hit the beast! There was a dull, breaking sound as something heavy hit the roof of the building two stories overhead, then a short, high-pitched yelp.

Silence.

Sephiroth furrowed his brows urging his eyes to see through the dust and smoke, but they were as useless as any human’s eyes in this physical body of his. He kept Masamune up knowing better than to expect Chaos to be defeated by a simple blow no matter how many bones it broke.

He should be right.

Three searing shots burst inches before the silver calamity’s nose held back by his protective barrier. Their impact was heavy and made him grunt in pain as his joints cracked under the strain as the magic burst. When he lowered his guard to launge a counterattack and the glowing eyes of the demon opened to his left instead of straight ahead, Sephiroth immediately turned but already knew it was too late. Surprise flashed through him as he came face to face with the WEAPON. It had used his lack of vision to drop from the roof! There was no way to avoid the hit; the beast was too near!

He pulled his sword up.

Claws as hard as mithril hit it, the metal shattering under the impact like glass. Moonlight shards cutting his face and neck; his hands. In all of his time on Gaia, neither before nor after his ascension to godhood noone had ever shattered Masamune! In reflex he still held onto it guiding it straight forward and upwards to where claws were aiming to mangle his face.

Mad with fury and lust for blood Chaos was blind for the danger. He speared itself, the sharp edge sinking straight into its chest. There was a sudden resistance, then the still considerable rest of Masamune drove through its sternum like a harpoon through a Malboro’s foul hide.

Time seemed to momentarily halt as they stared at each other, the beast breathing into his face and Sephiroth staring at it unwavering even though sharp nails that had once been human finernails were stuck centimeters deep in his shoulder. Chaos coughed. Dropf of blood soiled Sephiroth’s face but knew better than to blink. A warm sensation to his left told him he himself was bleeding.

Chaos gave a sound somewhere between a growl and a high-pitched shriek as his moment of shock transitioned into disbelieving rage. He pulled back causing himself even more pain as Sephiroth refused to let go the word. The beast struck out shattering the rest of the blade pulling it from its body and ripping parts of his own flesh clean off. It momentarily sank to his knees, but still had the Death Penalty aiming it. Sephiroth reacted swiftly. He closed his hand over the gun and blasted the energy of a fire spell into the barrel blowing up the gun from the inside. He burned his own arm, but Chaos lost two digits as it exploded.

As long as it had strength left Chaos would never give up. It dug his golden claw deep into Sephiroth’s side using the its own weight to try and pull him to the floor while he got up himself. Darkness formed around his body dancing like electricity, ready to be ejected into the wound in a single, violent blow.

Sephiroth’s strategy relied on the fact that Chaos was no longer an independent WEAPON. Albeit still powerful he had a human host that curbed his powers. Fuelling his anger would be enough to make him forget he wasn’t the WEAPON he was supposed to be which would eventually lead to mistakes, but mistakes the creature was making an awful lot too few of!

Sephiroth spit out retreating quickly pressing his left to his side as if it would stop the bloodflow.

“Such a disgrace!”, he cursed.

It had been a while since someone had put up a fight like that.

Before him Chaos was baring his teeth. The same blood dripping from his pearlescent fangs tasted sweet on Sephiroth’s tongue as he swiped his dirty face.

He could recreate the Masamune, but right now fists had to suffice!

“You will lose”, he prophesied darkly.

The WEAPON curled its lips in a smile, its crest of horns swaying with its head from side to side. The wound in its chest was already healing. As Sephiroth saw it he suddenly knew how to end the fight and win it.

Chaos had noticed he wouldn’t get too far with raw brutality alone and quickly accessed Vincent’s procedural memory to deal a series of punches and kicks to the weak areas in Sephiroth’s defense whenever he found some. With frightening speed he bore down on his stamina and strength. His right grazed the skin on Sephiroth’s cheek, tiny droplets of blood splashed into the night, his other one had five metallic nails slice Sephiroth’s arm. They went deep, he could feel the resistance of his bones. If he’d had the experience he could have known that - similar to him - Sephiroth was not a man being deterred by excruciating pain. He would have retreated and avoided the next blow, but it should come differently.

Sephiroth took the blows, waited patiently and when Chaos had to slow down eventually his fist dove into his chest. The creature shrieked in shock. It vomited blood. This would hurt now, the beast was accurately aware as Sephiroth pulled. It didn’t take much for the meager connection his heart had to his body to snap in a spray of blood. 

The WEAPON still stumbled forward, then it sagged like an empty shell. Chaos could have fainted - or simply died - but that wasn’t among the things the harbinger of death did. His bloodied face rose, the yellow, merciless eyes piercing into Sephiroth’s as if billions of years of existence on this planet didn’t exist and were invalidated by what had just happened: there was only the swirling mass of unchecked and ungoverned laws of physics and more hatred than any living creature would be able to muster.

Sephiroth summoned his sword anew that appeared in a flash of light.

The Death Penalty also reappeared in Chaos’ hand, shining metal and silver ornaments as if it had never been destroyed.

A searing beam of energy broke free from the tip of the weapon. The tool itself was longer than Chaos’ lower arm and was thrown back by the force of the discharge. It hit the general up front, the beautiful silver hair dissolved into dust and single molecules. Sephiroth looked shocked by the invasive pain as the dark lifestream clasped tight around his essence binding him to Chaos.

Chaos laughed; his bloodied fangs and lips distorting into a mask of insane glee even though he was already dying.

**“Your soul is mine!”**

Then he pulled. 

The dark lifestream snapped back to its source like a whip.

Sephiroth’s reply was short and on point.

“Predictable.”

Light erupted from within Sephiroth’s body as his essence yanked back. Chaos attempted to swallow him, but Sephiroth resisted. He felt no less hatred than the WEAPON, no less rage or will to hurt only for him it was a hatred against the very laws of the planet and therefor all the laws Chaos stood for. 

Chaos, harbinger of death, collected souls inside him and now Sephiroth had the means to take them!

He reached out to them forcing himself into the creature that hadn’t expected it. His essence braided with those souls and like it was a game of tug he _pulled._ Souls weren’t unconscious, they weren’t lifeless matter or neutral energy. Sephiroth promised them reincarnation. Sephiroth promised them a way to escape their eternal prison, the rule of Chaos; a different Lifestream to start anew within him. Sephiroth promised them a different world of which they too could become a meaningful part of the cycle of life again.

Chaos’ expression turned from triumph to confusion to alarm. The WEAPON gave a meager shriek, muscles and mind straining under the pressure of two opposing forces trying to rip them apart.

The harvested souls cried out against him as they linked with their new ally. They attacked him from the inside targeting the lungs, the muscles, the ribs, the stomach, the liver, the kidneys. They raged and raged against their host as their black turned into red, and then into bright pink. The WEAPON tried to sever their connection, but his own lifestream, source of its power, turned on him and came to Sephiroth’s aid. The thousands of souls that were too dangerous for Gaia to merge with the stream were now in Sephiroth’s possession.

There was a snap, as if a valve was suddenly breaking. The creature spread its wings in desperation, red and violet and black merging into the most exalted threat, then his physical form blurred as thousands and millions of souls burst through its skin, mouth and ears. In this moment a shiver went through the very fabric of Gaia as the planet jolted awake from its slumber feeling the pain of a vital organ being destroyed.

Above them the negative lifestream bloomed into a torrent of light dousing the nearby town of Nibelheim into a firy glow that all at once descended into the form of Sephiroth, a god who stood in triumph, all encompassing and glorious. He welcomed them into his body with spread arms, welcomed his own resurrection as a new, still more powerful creature like he would have standing at the middle of the Norther Crater taking the green lifestream to be born anew. Their voices and screams, all of their terrible memories were so loud they drowned out everything else and left him deaf and blind.

When even the last soul had diffused into him, night fell on them retaking what was its own.

Chaos stood, face pale and wings bled from colour as all of his energy had left him. The shine of his yellow, unyielding eyes was gone; now they were only marbles, lifeless and hollow. A shallow breath, more a sigh. Then he fell.

The once proud and mighty sails on his back followed his body as he keeled over and landed on his front.

Sephiroth looked at him. He felt nothing anymore, it was as if it all had been burned out of him like fire cauterized a festering wound. He blinked once, then again as he lowered his arms from where he had opened them to welcome his new alleys. A shiver went through his body a weakness finally came to him bringing him to his knees. Finally there was the pain he had expected.

He breathed, gagged, one hand on his chest as if trying to hold together a life threatening wound, but there was nothing! Nothing but a searing new power inside him that filled his entire being with agony and magnificence! It ceased as quickly as it had started leaving him light-headed. He felt like pure energy, like made of light and fire just beneath his skin! Before he knew it he was laughing in relief and joy! He laughed trying to remember who he was and what he had done, trying to fathom what it meant and he was still laughing as Chaos’ body crumbled away before his very eyes reverting to a simple, human corpse.

Sephiroth turned it with his boot and looked into the face of Vincent Valentine who had given his life so the destruction of Gaia could happen. Now there was nothing in his way anymore, nothing at all and Cloud? Cloud wasn’t even important anymore. Cloud would die just like everybody else, he might even let him watch.

Sephiroth tossed back his blood soiled hair over his shoulder. He felt tired and his wounds ached although they had healed the instant the black lifestream had joined the red. His eyes burned and he only noticed it were tears on his cheeks when he took off his gloves to rub them. He had gained all that he needed today, but he had also killed the last man on this planet that could have known the human child he had once been, he suddenly understood.

It was all the more surprising when he collected his corpse and noticed a faint breath. Through all that he had suffered Vincent Valentine was still alive? It seemed a downright wonder, but here he was pale as death, covered in blood and his wounds were healing! An aftereffect of Chaos’ presence, he wondered. Yes, that had to be it: they weren’t healing entirely. Already they stopped as Sephiroth held him in his arms. He could leave him, the silver calamity noticed - he wouldn’t survive the night - but if he was alive now then it meant Sephiroth hadn’t succeeded entirely. He had wanted Vincent’s soul too to take his memories, but it was still inside his body! Chaos’ possession must have shielded his soul from being sucked from his body like all the others, he speculated.

Anger over the unexpected complication quickly made way for thoughts on his next goal:

If things were like that then, for now, Vincent Valentine would live. He would need him to answer his questions. An examination of his body proved that this was more than a simple potion or spell could heal, he would have to take care of him and quickly. Although his legs were shaking Sephiroth picked him up and made his way back to the house.

A spectacle like his fight with Chaos would not go unnoticed.

Sephiroth had much to do before daybreak, but first…. he gave the unconscious man in his grasp a fond look. Vincent Valentine had done much for him tonight; he should return the favour. Gently he brushed a thread of black hair out of his face to look at the perfect arch of his brows. They were much like his own, he noticed, or those of his supposed mother, the scientist Lucrecia Crescent. There was a small trail of blood in the corner of his mouth that was beginning to dry.

Ah no, what god would he be if he let a man die that had made him such a valuable offering?

 

~*:*~

Surgery lasted for hours. 

Sephiroth kept Vincent sedated as he worked and he went through five elixirs: three for Valentine, and three for himself. The new souls hadn’t fully settled inside him yet, their memories evading his spirit at random pulling at his own. They were getting to know each other, he figured in a daze.

_Sephiroth, there is open heart surgery I want you to watch today before dinner._  
_Yes, Professor Hojo._

The lessons had stuck. Sephiroth knew the name and scientific designation of every organ, muscle, tissue and bone of the body. Even before he had become a god he had known how to cut a body so just the skin peeled off and not the muscles and now? It all came easy to him and his powerful magic did the rest. He worked until everything was back into place. His hours consisted of sewing and healing; sewing and healing, mending and more healing. Eventually he cast his last spell over the man’s pale body and watched as it descended into his flesh.

Magic was a fine tool, but it was also tricky and the damage was severe. Without mako likely his heart would still fail in time or an infection pull him to his death, so Sephiroth spent another hour gathering what he needed and applying the treatment. Shinra mansion was perfect for his purposes he noticed: everything he could possibly require was already here and he made good use of it. He worked with calm precision and eventually his task was complete: before him on the table lay not a corpse, but a patient; sick but alive. His exposed chest was pale and covered in faint scars that must have been deeper, more prominent before Chaos had healed them a long time ago. Sephiroth took his time to take in the sight of each and every one, occasionally tracing them with his digits.

He wondered who had dealt them to Vincent Valentine. Some of them looked like surgery wounds, like the fresh one from his neck to his navel or the stitches on his forehead where one of Masamune’s shards had cut him. Naked from his waist up it became evident how fragile this man’s body was. He was muscular because Chaos required a working host, but there wasn’t even a bit of fat on his ribs. What Sephiroth saw was a man who hadn’t eaten well for a long time and Vincent Valentine was mortal now: he would have to take care of his sustenance too unless he wanted him to starve within the first few weeks.

His gaze trailed down to where Vincent’s hands lay next to his body chained to the surgery table. By the time he woke up, Valentine would be mako addicted and Sephiroth would easily get any information he wanted from him.

He sighed in satisfaction.

Now he could rest.

He wrapped a blanket around the man to shield his body from the cold of the basement, then sat down not far from him. Exhaustion was finally coming for him and strangely he liked the feeling. Within the lifestream none of it existed.

He had read almost all the books, but a few of the unimportant ones he had left out would entertain him well enough until his patient woke up. Although there was nothing to do Sephiroth’s gaze returned to the unconscious man a few more times and he found himself watching how his chest rose and fell with his steady breath. 

_Isn’t she magnificent, Sephiroth? A healthy specimen; she will lead me to the Promised Land._  
_Like me?_  
_You? You aren’t like that, boy - sadly. You’re not going to lead me anywhere at all, except… yes, why not? We will find something else for you to be of use._

Sephiroth shook his head and the memory dissipated like mist as the newly formed parts of the Red went on chasing different prey. There were so many memories within the lifestream in Sephiroth’s body, but now they couldn’t hurt him anymore. They would never again have power over him. He returned to reading and he kept reading until Vincent finally stirred.

The former Turk woke up in pain. He opened his eyes and stared into the abyss of pure, white hot pain! He lifted a finger and it almost collapsed his lungs. A horrifying, gurgling sound pierced through his ears, as if something was slowly dying, and it took him almost a minute to understand that this was him! _He_ was making these sounds!

There was a taste of iron and vomit and chemicals in his mouth that made him want to throw up but as he almost did the pain was so severe he nearly fainted. More in a reflex than anything else he tried to curl up into fetal position but was held back by two heavy chains on his wrists. At first he mistook them for hands holding him in place and gave a meager, frightened sound as he felt a shadow fall over him and a voice spoke.

“Rest easy”, it said.

He felt a hand stroke his hair back and as his vision returned to him he was staring into the face of Sephiroth, the last he had seen before Chaos had taken a hold of his body. 

The tall man vanished from his bed soon only to return not long after with a syringe in his hands. It wasn’t really a bed he was lying on either, Vincent noticed with horror. Again he struggled as the needle entered his arm and a cool sensation spread under his skin.

_“No!”_

His protest came out as such a meager sound he didn’t recognize his own voice.

Vincent wanted to scream! It felt too familiar; bright lights like the sun that burned his eyes just as much, pain, weakness. He struggled in panic. In reality his arms would barely lift, his muscles found no strength in them. The skin on his chest and belly though felt like it would rip and release his life into the cold, moist air of the room.

He tried to talk, yell at the man he couldn’t see clearly anymore to let him go. Instead he grit his teeth like an animal trying to bite. Something hot and wet appeared in the corners of his eyes and ran down his temples into his hair - tears. From pain, fright or anger, he couldn’t even tell himself. 

With concern Sephiroth took off his leather gloves to push his soothingly cold hands on Vincent’s forehead and cheek to find it had happened after all: Vincent was hot with fever.

“Shhh,” he whispered stroking his eyes to a close. He ran his thumb over the eyebrows, then his cheekbone. 

“You are safe, you are healing. You are safe, Vincent Valentine.”

There was a pause in his movements as Sephiroth sat down again and resumed stroking Vincent’s face. 

“This is how my father used to calm me down,” Sephiroth said and then chuckled and shrugged. “Well, no, calling that incompetent fool by that name would be an honour to him.”

He pulled the blanket up and tucked it under Vincent’s chin. “Either way he taught me how to save lives and that’s what I did: I saved your life. You can trust me; rely only on me. I will be your saviour, your guardian. I will take care of you. You’re safe with me, be at ease.”

The drip that invaded Vincent’s arm and provided him with fluid and nutrition right into his bloodstream was taped to his arm with duct tape. All other tapes had grown too old, and Sephiroth feared the man might rip it off in a frenzy once his hands would be finally released. Keeping him tied down meant that he had to massage him later to avoid painful bruises from being in one place too long. 

Sephiroth combed his black hair with his digits.

“Your well-being is of importance to me. Are you comfortable..?”

But Vincent had no answer for him.

There was no safety here, he knew and when darkness took him again he only went reluctantly. His sleep was unnatural, but his dreams were as horrible as always. He mainly dreamed of his past again, of footsteps on cold stone and poison on his lips. Needles, stainless steel, antiseptics. Sephiroth’s words, meant to be soothing, turned into Hojo’s twisted voice in his mind. Sometimes he noticed he was writhing in agony, other times he was so far gone into his hallucinations he wouldn’t even know his own name.

He spent two weeks barely awake, the fever burning in his veins like a poison spell. Only after the thirteenth day his temperature would drop a little and Vincent came to. He felt weak like a newborn, but his mind was clear.

Still shackled he couldn’t move much, but he could turn his head to try see the man standing not far away, back turned towards him. He strained his neck and it cost him a lot of energy, but maybe it was worth it if only that man wasn’t another scientist. Strangely enough he felt neither relief nor terror upon seeing Sephiroth; the fever had burned all of his emotions away. The only thing left were dark circles the colour of his ink-black hair under his eyes.

Sephiroth felt the change in the atmosphere as a prickling feeling at his hairline. He knew when he was being watched. He stayed still a moment longer fully expecting Vincent to go back to sleep, but as he didn’t turned towards him. His bright eyes focused on him in amusement.

“Good morning,” Sephiroth said. “You have seen better days.”

Vincent followed him with his eyes; as a hand gently touched his face he jerked back a little. Sephiroth didn’t mean to hurt him though, he noticed and ceased struggling against his chains. He wasn’t able to keep it up. With dread in his stomache he realized he was at his mercy and apparently that hadn’t served him well before judging by the pain still in his body.

Sephiroth smiled at him with all the frightening innocence of a child.

“You’re safe, and you’re healing. How are you feeling?”

Vincent made an attempt to speak, failed, then tried again.

_“What did you do?”_

Something was different; he was different. It felt like a weight he ought to have on his back was suddenly gone and simultaneously he felt empty. He’d always felt so empty and cold, but this was different. It felt like part of him had been wrenched from his grasp. It felt like loss.

Sephiroth took his time to answer. Digits roamed down his arm until they found his wrist. He undid the chains around his hands. As long as the man co-operated, he should have the opportunity to roam quite freely should his feeble body permit such endavours. He even allowed himself to briefly massage the reddened skin the chains had grazed as Vincent had struggled.

“You certainly do not sound well,” he mused. “Let us trade information, Vincent Valentine. How are you feeling?” 

As soon as he was free Vincent rolled around and placed a hand on his stomach. He felt bandages and creased his face into a grimace of pain.

“I feel like a corpse!”, he pushed through his teeth. 

“What did you do!”

That wasn’t alright, he shouldn’t be healing this slowly! Inwardly he cried out for Chaos, for an explanation, but he received no answer and that was more upsetting than the pain itself. Although he’d loathed the creature, Chaos was also protection. He remembered him bursting free, then nothing. Nothing was all that was there and suddenly he noticed he couldn’t locate the others either. Usually Hellmasker would be mocking him, maybe make a tasteless joke on his expense. Death Giga’s distaste and confusion would be felt like a vibrating string near his heart. Galian Beast would sulk hoping for orders it could fulfill to not be left facing their predicament directionless. They did nothing of it today. He couldn’t hear them at all!

Sephiroth’s face was emotionless.

“ I found your immortality a hindrance and your power a threat, thus I made you mortal.” 

He stood still as if to get Vincent used to him who still looked like he would jump in fright at the next sudden movement.

“I orchestrated an appearance of Chaos without it being a limit break so it would be unprepared. I cut it...you, open and took the WEAPON. I took your demons too. You’re nothing but a man now. You’re mortal, Vincent Valentine. It’s what you always wanted.”

Sephiroth knew that; as soon as Chaos had joined his stream he had caught onto its most important wish and that had surprised him, because usually WEAPONs had no other wishes than to serve the planet: Chaos wanted to be free. Sitting in his chair, reading and going threw so many memories and consciousnesses at once, Sephiroth had found so many more wishes within the WEAPON and through him he’d found the wishes of Vincent Valentine the creature knew of. Some of them were so strong they imprinted even on a WEAPON and the strangest part was they all revolved around love. Once upon a time this man had loved someone and that had changed him in ways Chaos couldn’t understand and neither could Sephiroth. Those wishes had left him confused, but one he had felt clearly: Vincent wanted to be free too. He wanted to be mortal. By taking his demons, Sephiroth should have given him what he wanted most and it bewildered him seeing the man’s face distort in desperate horror. Fragile hands flew to his face feeling the skin as if for the first time and in a sense it was: it was now a different body.

Vincent looked much like he would fall apart behind the black strands of his hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got out late thanks to sudden and quite frightening struggles with health...


	5. A story about love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is where the rape trigger warning is needed. You are hereby warned.

_“The thing about love is that it barely comes at the right time, even rarer in the right form. But despite that, if the soul is unending joining the stream after death, would it not mean love shares its eternity? Is Sephiroth not proof enough that hatred does? I believe that if a feeling is so strong it changes you it inevitably becomes a part of you. It leaves a mark and sometimes it beomes the only thing keeping us going. Falling in love is not a figure of speech: beginning to love is a readiness to fall, to let go of all the other things important to us so love can take their place. Love is a parasite. Eventually, love is being willing to fall feeling that if we aren’t caught it was still worth it. You must be ready to fall and there are a million ways to do so. Sometimes you don’t get back up. Sometimes you become immortal, in a way.”_

 

Vincent only noticed he had been holding his breath when his lungs were cautiously knocking on the door of his occupied mind. He took a deep breath. It weren’t the news he’d expected. It weren’t even the news he’d feared. 

_Mortal._

He’d wanted it for so long and of all people Sephiroth was the one to grant it to him. Of all people Sephiroth was here to twist it into a bad thing. The realization of what it meant was a glowing white needle entering his body through his brain from where it was pushed down into his torso, guts and legs to exit through each of his toes. Vincent’s nails scratched over the clean surface of the operating table he was lying on as he pushed against it. It was straining in his weakened state, but eventually his body lifted off the surface, the naked soles of his feet touching the floor soon after. They sucked up its wintry coldness like a thin sheet of paper took in water.

It was embarrassing: he couldn’t even let go of the furniture if he wanted to remain standing!

“Fragile, scared old man,” Sephiroth mused. “What are you trying to do now?” 

Surely an experienced person such as him knew that there was no easy way out of Nibelheim? To three sides the town was encased by mountains and the only open side was a vast ocean of grass that couldn’t be crossed by foot. It was madness, but he had to respect and congratulate Valentine for his determination. It looked difficult to stand even for an act so simple. 

Sephiroth watched him and felt a growing fondness, a growing kindness, in his tummy. In years no one had relied on him this much, by none had he been needed except by his goal and suddenly here was Valentine - who could not even stay upright without a little help. For Sephiroth who had relinquished many of his memories to the stream helping others was new again. In theory it was alright, but in practise even better. He curteously offered a single, open hand:

“May I help you?”

Vincent allowed himself to gather his strength. He was breathing heavily, his knuckles white against the table. His eyes were still as hellish red as ever as he glared at the man through his bangs covering his face.

“You may!”, he answered, then used Sephiroth’s hand to pull himself upright and punched him in the face.

For a man this weak it was still a great hit.

Sephiroth’s head was knocked back by the blow. For a moment he stood half bent backwards, so perfectly still Vincent wondered if he even had pain reflexes. Apparently though he had only used the time to reign in his temper, because when he straightened his back again his eyes were as cold as ever save for a tiny twitch in the corner of his mouth. Sephiroth ran his hand over his jaw cracking it once from left to right. He tasted blood from when he’d bitten his tongue.

“To which of my doings do I owe that punch?” he asked. 

“To your… last one!”, Vincent breathed. “Excuse me!”

Then he began his laborious walk out of the room, one hand on his chest as if to hold his body together. One step at a time, he reminded himself. It wasn’t like he needed to take care of his body for what he had in mind. His goal wasn’t the room with the coffins, it wasn’t the library: he wanted upstairs.

He grit his teeth and worked through the pain.

So Chaos was gone.

Dead.

Hadn’t the creature always claimed he couldn’t die?

Well, hard luck.

Vincent only noticed he was crying when his eyes started to burn. 

Sephiroth looked after him, watched as he struggled. He let him go letting him open the door by himself. It would take him long to reach the ladder, even longer to move all the way up the spiral staircase. Plenty of time to stop him, surely the man had to be aware of that. He felt a cruel curiosity to find out how far the man would make it if he didn’t.

Sephiroth decided it would be best not to go after him: let him find out by himself that running was futile. Calmly he folded the blanket on the table Valentine had been lying on for two weeks and started to tidy up. The whole room smelled of old blood and science, but there were no windows to let in better air. Sephiroth retreated back to the library where he ran his fingers over the last of Dr. Crescent's diaries. He picked her first from the shelf, but his mind was on Valentine. He started reading, but his mind was on Valentine. 

If he fell his wounds would reopen. He could also damage a bone or break his neck. 

Worrying did not make sense, it did not achieve anything. Sephiroth disliked worrying. He continued to read. Subconsciously he followed after Valentine who had reached the upper end of the ladder.

He was so exhausted he had to stop for a while. Ahead of him he saw only stairs.

Just an endless flight of stairs!

He went on, slowly, eventually using his hands and feet.

He slipped on the wet and mossy stone and fell hard onto his outstretched hands. It earned him a painful bruise to his left shin and an elbow. When he’d managed half of the stairs he was merely crawling. His knees and hands were bleeding. Strands of black hair stuck to his sweaty forehead.

He broke down again and didn’t get back up.

For minutes the world was spinning. 

He was mortal.

Just a man, injured, but not broken.

His demons were gone. His face wasn’t just wet from cold sweat anymore.

This was what he’d always wanted. How dare Sephiroth, how dare Aerith’s murderer, give it to him? How dare he!

Vincent coughed, rolling around to push against the stone once more. He could feel his heart’s laboured beats - if he kept it up much longer he would likely die from cardiac arrest.

His shaking fingers brushed over the edges of the stone beneath him. Originally he’d wanted to reach one of the first floor windows for his suicide, but maybe he didn’t need one. It was a pity he would go like this because he’d have liked to tell Cloud of his findings, but in the end the swordsman would notice on his own, wouldn’t he? The important thing was: Sephiroth wouldn’t get him. The god of the Red had said it himself: he only needed to die. If Vincent’s lifestream was to fall into his hands, all his knowledge would with it. Vincent wasn’t delusional enough to believe he could withstand interrogation by a god which left him two choices: he could live and burden himself with yet another sin telling Sephiroth whatever he wanted to know or he could die before Sephiroth could take him for the Red. And he would rather die than join the Red of Jenova!

One more time Vincent pushed himself up and rolled his body over the edge. Empty air welcomed him. This was his last triumph: at least he would have done it himself! At least he would not end up one of Sephiroth’s souls!

Inside the library, Sephiroth’s head jerked up from the book. Anger welled up in his chest. There wasn’t much time to think about anything else than to catch Valentine before he hit the floor and foiled his plans. Strange enough one unexpected event rarely occured alone. He felt a shift in his consciousness, the rest blurred.

A well of light erupted in the darkness of the basement several stories below the point Vincent had pushed off the stairs. It was so bright it blinded him and he didn’t see as two hands grabbed him, one around his knees and one around his back. The firm grip closed around him right before his body would splatter against the floor surface.

**“You can’t survive without me, can’t you?”**

Vincent stared up at the creature; effectively silenced by shock. At first he thought Sephiroth had changed form - he’d seen his god-like appearance illuminate the sky with its presence before; an angel with one wing on his back and several smaller ones sprouting from his lower body. This wasn’t like it at all though. This creature had silver horns reminiscent of Sephiroth’s hair frozen in motion; a faint silver glow seemed to surround him like a halo of moonlight. Over his arms and neck though darkened skin stretched and his blood-red wings stood in stark contrast to yet again silver claws the length of kitchen knifes. Its face was a porcelain turquoise and at least its shape looked like the man it had been made from. Vincent would know those golden, cruel eyes anytime though.

 _“Chaos!”,_ he gasped in disbelief.

Vincent stared at his former demon’s mythical majesty, unable to comprehend until suddenly it dawned on him: Chaos couldn’t merge with the stream - any stream! - and Sephiroth didn’t have the protomateria! By devouring Chaos he had effectively transmitted the possession to himself! Sephiroth was without a doubt in there somewhere probably too stunned to act.

Vincent laughed.

The irony of it was just too much! It hurt his ribs and soon he felt like throwing up all over himself AND the entity of his former limit break, but he just couldn’t stop laughing. It took him a while until his head sank back against Chaos’ arm. He was fainting, he was aware, but he still kept a smile on his lips. His hands were desperately clinging to the WEAPON as if that could keep him awake a little longer.

“I didn’t think I would see you again”, he croaked. “But this is the greatest backlash of karma I have ever witnessed!”

Chaos granted him a sullen mutter:

**”Wait until Sephiroth finds out it’s not just the Green rejecting him: he can’t even merge with his own stream. You will have a field day.”**

It was confusing staring into Chaos’ face and seeing his son. Had it been like this for Cloud and the others too when he limit broke, this strange feeling of seeing him in every movement of that pale face when he spoke and simultaneously not-him as he ripped through the bodies of their enemies with bare hands? Vincent watched in awe as Not-Sephiroth bared his fangs in a smile. They were always a little too big, he remembered that about his own transformations; they always pushed against his lower lip and in fact the creature spoke with a lisp. Vincent scrunched his face in pain.

“Sephiroth can’t merge….”

He repeated it to himself, it felt like vital information to his fading consciousness. It felt like…

_Sephiroth can’t merge._

All of a sudden he felt so stupid. So, so stupid! Of course he couldn’t merge with either lifestream, he was neither fully Gaian nor Jenovian! He claimed to have accepted and welcomed his otherness as a being from a different origin, but did he even know what they looked like? Could one even imagine to be what they had never seen?

His hold on the WEAPON’s chest grew tighter. In this moment whatever differences they’d had in the past didn’t matter anymore; they paled in light of his sudden haste. Vincent’s lips quivered from weakness as he urged the demon:

“You need to destroy him! He failed in assimilating you into his stream; he clearly is unable to neutralize you! You must kill him; you’re Gaia’s last WEAPON!”

The entity’s feet touched the floor so lightly it made no sound, like an epiphany walking over water.

 **“So dramatic,”** Chaos mused and held Vincent tight with both hands. **“If you keep it up I won’t even miss being in your head.”**

He started walking to the living area of the Nibelheim house. There were warm beds there much better suited than lab tables. Knowing Vincent he’d probably need tea to get his digestive system going again, perhaps some soup too. Chaos too had been human and with human routine he wrapped Vincent up tight into the sheets. The gunman had no other choice than to accept his fate. He hadn’t ever seen Chaos do a thing like it and had definitely not thought it possible, but he had experienced more things in the last few days than his brain could handle so he just passively started to believe in wonders.

The demon seemed in thought. Vincent tried to listen intently as Chaos shared what knowledge Sephiroth’s mind yielded knowing he would not hear it again.

**“I am not going to just kill him - that would be counterproductive. The way he is now he can’t enter either Lifestream and destroying the planet would be a futile effort. He’s outside the cycle of rebirth and has just realized what it means. He will need to find a solution first. Sephiroth is immortal. He’s not learned how to die yet.”**

Vincent would have lied to himself if he thought it all made perfect sense to him, but he was understanding things were discussed here greater than what humans ought to know about planets and the workings of life and death. Things Chaos admittedly was a specialist at. With it undoubtedly came a certain cruel nature and it was all the more surprising to him as the being stopped in its litany to wipe at its eyes. His face was stoic and calm, but tears rolled over his cheeks, along the vertical lines akin to scars on his face.

 **“Oh,”** Chaos muttered very matter of factly. 

**“Wonderboy has woken - he’s stronger than you. I think he’s putting up a fight. He overheard us or realized the same thing. You’re fucked, Sephiroth! Fucked!”,** the creature yelled into the room as if Sephiroth could hear it better then.

“He’ll stop crying in time. Personally, I’m having a rather grand time. Another pillow?"

Vincent shook his head in bewilderment and slight nausea. He had no power to do anything anymore. A wave of hopelessness crashed over him: now they were as smart as before. It seemed there was no killing Sephiroth and no saving him either. They were stuck. All they had now was a WEAPON of death without conscience bestowed with all the power of a god.

He wished he could have lifted a hand to touch his face - Sephiroth’s face - to tell him he was sorry. It seemed their roles were reversed now: Vincent being free and Sephiroth sitting in a death cell with all of his magic and might and nothing that really mattered. He had no home to go to. All of his parents and gods rejected him.

“Will you ever give him free again?”, Vincent wondered, knowing of the cruel nature of the demon. If reducing a threat to naught meant sharing a body with Gaia’s worst enemy, then he was capable of doing so. Chaos’ mind had always been stronger than his own. 

The demon laughed.

 

**“No. A soul like his is too dangerous to roam freely. I’ll keep him and I’ll crush him, sooner or later I will find a way. He will know how I do it when I pluck him apart piece by piece.”**

Vincent turned to look the ceiling. Somewhere above him there were stars, he knew. Before he knew it, his consciousness had finally faded.

Hours later it was not Chaos who was fast asleep beside Vincent, but Sephiroth. His long silver hair was hanging from the mattress and some strands lay on the floor. He had one knee over Vincent’s legs, and both hands folded into a big fist under his chin, as if he were praying. His head was asleep on the same pillow. He was curled up against Vincent like a cat, or maybe a small child. The light dances on his chest as it rose and fell with his breath.

Vincent didn’t move.

Considering Chaos’ words he was surprised to find Sephiroth next to him. If the Enemy of the World had had any say in it he would surely not have fallen asleep in a vulnerable position like this, even though Vincent was hardly able to harm him with the state he was in. Dried up tears stained the snow-white face and had left darkened streaks where the dust of the bedding had rubbed into it. Carefully the gunman stroked his silver hair.

Sephiroth would be experiencing now what he had been made to go through. If it held true he would not be spending much time in his own body. Chaos would relentlessly attack his mind until he was too exhausted to fend him off anymore, then he would destroy it. He would pluck it apart like one plucked leaves off a sick tree. It was not a fate he had wished for his son, but maybe it was the fate he deserved for what he had done to the many that hadn’t come willingly to his stream and those who had died and suffered from his hands. Chaos wasn’t Aerith. He would show no mercy and it would be a ghastly sight witnessing his son descend into agonizing madness. He’d avoided watching it happen to himself once by locking himself away in a coffin, but now the full brunt of his failings with Sephiroth would bloom in front of him like a bloodied rose with vicious thorns. Suddenly he knew why he hadn’t left the mansion those few days ago: he would not run again. He’d seen Sephiroth begin, now he would be the one to see him end too.

Slowly his fingers tangled with the silver strands of hair.

“I love you”, he whispered to his son, just so he could hear himself say it once in his life.

Sephiroth stirred. He squeezed his eyes shut, frowned. His next breath was a sigh as he woke.

The world was a bright now, apparently dawn had come. As long as he didn’t lift his head he could still look into the darkness of the sheets. He pressed his face closer to the body next to him that smelled of gunpowder, leather and musk. But when the body moved, the sheets rustled, Sephiroth noticed that the other was in fact not yet another corpse of someone he had killed in a fling of madness with no memory of the act afterwards.

Sephiroth sat up.

Silver hair simultaneously slid over his shoulders

Then he looked over to Vincent Valentine.

“You did something to me!”

Vincent was paler than usual, his latest endeavors had thrown his healing back several days. He let go of Sephiroth’s hair. 

“You did this to yourself.”

Contrary to Vincent’s expectations there was no anger to befall Sephiroth now. He just looked confused, almost like a child. Sephiroth gathered his hair over one shoulder, and stroke his fingers over the strands as if to replace Vincent’s touch with his own. It had been the professor’s habit to stroke him after intensive mako treatments or minor surgery. 

_It was to make you stronger. One day you will be thankful to me, Sephiroth._

Strange thoughts flashed through his mind’s eye. Things he hadn’t thought of for years, but none of what he was actually missing. Something bad had happened to him. Something terrible… akin to caring. Love.

 _I love you_ \- he’d heard that.

He remembered something else, things that stood in context with that sentence. Memories in which men and women pulled his hair, touched his chest and his face and his crotch. They screamed his name in devotion, and said: Sephiroth, I love you, I love you, I love you.

The General raised his eyes and looked at the face before him. Handsome, but dark. Akin to a mirror image of his own. 

Sephiroth shook his head.

Love though kept people devoted to him, because attachment was a weapon. Because it kept people alive as his fans had sworn to him in letters. Sephiroth propped himself on his knees hoovering over Vincent who narrowed his eyes at him. 

“I accept your love.” 

He locked their lips in a kiss. It was a threat.

Although it was soft, it simultaneously felt as hard as a steel trap closing around him. Vincent didn’t know what was worse: that Sephiroth had heard him, that he’d obviously interpreted his words wrong or the fact that he acted upon it! In a matter of seconds his face flushed; in his surprise he brought his hands up to push against Sephiroth’s shoulders. That push never came though. In the end he just lay dumbfounded like a deer in the headlights. 

He only managed to push against him as the silver-haired man was already leaning back from his now burning lips. 

_“Don’t!”_ , he half growled, half sighed at his son.

Sephiroth was pleased at Vincent’s blush taking it for shyness.

”Then you will teach me,” he goaded him.

“This is a misunderstanding. You wouldn’t be doing this if you had any idea of what it means.”

In the last few days Vincent had come to think, maybe even hope, that Sephiroth knew about his real father, but now he was sure that he had no idea.

“You don’t know what you’re asking!”

Sephiroth sobered. He’d had groupies and in his phase when he had occasionally joined G&G for clubbing nights he had sometimes even come home with one of them. Or two. Or three. He had worn them out so fast it wasn’t even any fun, but it was part of what the public expected. In his life Sephiroth had never been in in a situation where he wanted anyone but couldn’t have them and his disbelief was quite enormous as he said:

“You… _reject me?”_

He said the words in a way that allowed every part of the sentence to gather its own stress, loading it with loneliness, pain and nails to keep Valentine pinned to the bed. 

Love, no, Sephiroth had no idea what love meant.

But he knew lust and so he leaned over the flustered Valentine now and pushed him into the mattress. He kissed him with tongue like he owned him. It tasted good, addictive. Hands immediately roamed deeper down the struggling body. Vincent’s fingernails dug into his shoulders but slid off the armour. As a Turk he was well-versed in self-defense. Quickly the gunman pulled his knees up and gave a hard shove to send the man flying!

To Sephiroth though his resistance didn’t come as a surprise. So Valentine wasn’t willing? That would change. Sephiroth liked to conquer, he liked to win. It was the thing he was trained for, the only thing he was meant to do. 

Despite the weaker man used considerable force injuries didn’t heal overnight. Sephiroth turned sideways and was back on top of him in no time. He dug his thumbs into the insides of Vincent’s knees putting force onto the pressure points there until his need to escape the excrutiating pain was greater than his fear of opening his legs. Sephiroth needed power for this, but the man himself was a manifestation of power. His mako eyes gleamed with elation.

“I know Chaos is within my body now. I’ll let this be a lesson to him! When I took your lips right now the creature was angry, but...silent. If you managed to give him a Stockholm syndrome, it will certainly work when I give one to you!”

Vincent’s struggle turned into a desperate quarrel. He had never feared Sephiroth in a way like this. The possibility his own son - whether he knew about their blood relation or not - could be capable of a thing like this felt like a deadly sin on its own. Despite his growing pain pure panic gave him strengh and left Sephiroth with a long, bleeding scratch in his face, barely missing his eye.

Vincent lost anyway.

With grit teeth he glared up at his tormentor, limbs shaking from the strain of going way over his resources. Sephiroth remained his place, but momentarily ceased further attack as Vincent yielded with fatigue. The sentence [i]don’t you reject me[/i] still hung between them; the air was loaded with it like a gun with a bullet.

“I’ll take you against your will and then you will tell me everything I have always wanted to know about _her_ lest you want me to do it to you again.” 

He looked at Valentine’s body with glistening green eyes, but his look was far from sensual. It was calculating, medical, assessive. The bandages around Vincent’s chest were stained, and would need replacement. Vincent’s heart sank. Did the Young Calamity even know the importance of the intimacy he was threatening to violate? His gaze told him no. Intimacy was never a concept explained to Sephiroth. His body was a possession of science, of Shinra. His threat, suggesting eventual rape, was not for the sake of breaching privacy he had no concept of. He did it to achieve his goals. In his hands even the worst actions of humanity were a simple tool.

“Alternatively,” he said softly as he let go of Valentine’s knees, “you tell me everything you know and I will bring you to the next hospital. There you can tell the world about my reappearance.” 

“You know nothing, Sephiroth”, the gunman spit venomously.

Then he turned away averting his gaze. 

He lay limply beneath the man signaling his defeat. He’d given up hoping it would at least spare him further humiliation and pain. They were on uneven grounds, fighting Sephiroth like this would achieve nothing.

With relief he noticed he was let go at last. Bitterly he asked:

“What….do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Sephiroth demanded. “Who Lucrecia Crescent was and how I am like her. Explain so I may make informed decisions and don’t dare lie to me. I was taught enough things by Veld to get what I want and if need be I can be very cruel. You’ll do as I say, dog of Shinra.”

Vincent’s palm landed in Sephiroth’s face with a very audible clash.

Not the wisest decision of his life, but definitely one of the most satisfying.

“Never call me that again!”

He’d abandoned Shinra a long time ago, for very good reasons and he would not be going back there; not for money and not for Veld, not even if he weren’t dead. It were men like Hojo he would never again be cooperating with, he would rather die right here and now than have it said about him.

Sephiroth, hit for a second time in only two days, remained still. A deranged smile flashed over his features.

“Are you angry?” he asked. “Do you feel it surge through you? It’s power. You hate to be called a Shinra dog just as much as I did - and yet you keep their secrets.”

He glanced back, showing the dried blood from Vincent’s scratches earlier and the cheek with the handprint at the same time. 

“I want you to think about whose side you are on - that of the company whose policies you continue to uphold by your silence or the side of the people who have had enough of them. Not choosing is no option, because you are mortal now and your soul will enter either red or green Lifestream when you die. Think and once a day I will ask you to tell me more about Dr. Crescent.”

Vincent gave a scornful snort.

“This needs no thinking! All thinking on this has been done long ago!”

He heaved himself up onto his elbows retreating to the headrest of the bed to be in a bit more favourable position than the weak one on his back beneath Sephiroth.

“I might be mortal, but I would rather die than join your stream!”

What had Chaos called it one time? A cesspool of filth and garbage? 

“I have nothing but disgust for Shinra. Whatever information you want on them, you can have it. I don’t care! But Lucrecia is not Shinra! I am not Shinra! Consider yourself property if it gives you a place you think you belong, but I no longer belong to anyone!”

It was worse enough to admit that once upon a time he had. He wasn’t sure of much about himself, but that he would repeat anytime; it was a knowledge burning inside him like liquid fire: no part of him belonged to Shinra. Not his mako red eyes mothers pulled their children away from, not his cells that had refused to die for so long and none of his mind that had tormented him for most of his life. Whatever pain he’d had to endure, at least it was his. This was all him now! And he would defend himself!

”Then where do you belong?” Sephiroth asked mockingly softly. “You have no family, no mobile phone, no contact with friends, no company, no Chaos, nobody. You’re all alone.“

The unspoken implication was clear.

_You are like me; ex-product and ex-property. And angry. We are the same._

“Tell me how I am like Dr. Crescent.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you might be wondering by now 'why the fuck is this author so goddamn slow'?? That is because I work fulltime, learn Japanese in my spare time and am spending the remaining time at doctor's offices. That last part was definitely not planned, but shit hit the fan a few months ago and thought I'm fine now I still won't toy with this. This fic is v important to me, but these other things sadly need doing first and I guess we'll all survive the slow pace. I haven't forgotten about the tracklist I promised either and I'll post the whole thing with the next chapter, I think.
> 
> So, at this point I'd like to explain something important too which I think I haven't: these mentions of the Red and the Green, they're about lifestream. This fic largely goes with the Jenova Omega Theory which is a large fandom theory making the rounds since a few years. It's very well deduced and admittedly rather complex, but to those of you who don't know it and don't wish to read up on it the essence is: Jenova originally isn't (only) a random alien parasite, she is a goddess of her own red lifestream much like Minerva, who came to Gaia via her own Omega WEAPON (the meteorite) after her planet was destroyed. Sadly she caught an already inhabited planet which led to differences. Sephiroth becomes the new god of the red lifestream at the end of FF7 trying to take the green stream too, but is then killed. Essentially he cannot merge with Gaia's lifestream because he's different and now rules over a stream of red souls condensed into his being making him a true god, although a weakened one considering Gaia's mass of energy for comparison. Sephiroth is not all knowing, but he is very powerful and has gathered vast knowledge. A lot about his past life is still gone though sealed within the green lifestream which is why he needs Vincent to tell him about himself and how he was made. He assumes the knowledge will teach him what he is missing to finally reach his goals.
> 
>  
> 
> Kal asked:  
> "Hi. Im loving this story. Its getting more and more interesting, altought at first it was confusing trying to get who's pov it was. Later it got clear."
> 
> \--- I can see why that might be confusing. We usually see a story being told from the POV of one character and many people forget there's a thing such as the 'all knowing narrator' as well where a story is being told from all perspectives. Since this was originally an rp, naturally every character knows about themselves and it's way easier to me to keep that style for the fic also. Tbh I would never tell an original story like it, but it's definitely new and exciting to me now because we can know things some of the protagonists don't have a clue of: like Sephiroth who's unaware Vincent is his father while Vincent and Chaos know. It opens possibilities and I'm not mad at that. >:3


	6. Favours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I probably should post a warning here, but I really don't know what I would tag this. You know this story isn't for you if you're easily upset.

“Tell me how I am like Dr. Crescent.”

Vincent laughed darkly. It was a laugh like a bark.

“I might not have all that - family, friends to help me now, a phone, maybe not even any worth to the planet now that Chaos is gone”, he swallowed. “So what? Do you think because those are not with me that I have lost them? You are a poor man, Sephiroth, because you understand nothing. Do you enjoy Chaos’ company? According to your words you should be proud to have him, shouldn’t you? Since he is _yours_ now?”

Vincent straightened his back; even without the WEAPON he seemed to grow. In that moment he was unafraid because unknowingly Sephiroth had reminded him of the most important thing.

“All those souls you have, all these lives, and still everywhere you go you are alone! Everywhere you go you’re searching for yourself never finding peace, but everywhere I go I’m at home!”

He’d travelled Gaia for months and never once felt lost or alone. Many things had weighed down at his soul and it had shown, maybe by the standards of normal people he couldn’t be considered a good friend, but maybe that wasn’t important either. The important thing was that he would never abandon Cloud, Tifa or any of the others and they would not abandon him either. He had a firm belief in that and whether it was true or not, it was what he had chosen to believe.

“Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy, Sephiroth, and as long as you think of yourself the way you do, you will be that way. You will gain nothing. You are far more alone than I could ever be. If I said you were like Lucrecia, then it wasn’t your personality I was talking about, because obviously nothing of her passed on to you. Lucrecia was far better than any of us! She-”

He was cut off by a hand grabbing his throat, green narrowed eyes inches before his face, so close he could see the movement of the slit pupils adjusting. Sephiroth looked at him curiously while Vincent gasped for air clawing at his fist. There was a hot anger in him fear couldn’t quench. It spread through him like liquid fire and filled his head.

Sephiroth smiled.

“It seems I forgot someone. _Dogs_ like to live in a pack.”

Vincent’s response was a choked growl, then he grew in his hold his body expanding and sprouting fur. Bones cracked as his face lengthened to a snout full of teeth, claws grasping for Sephiroth who suddenly seemed ridiculously small compared to the beast rising before him. Even the Calamity couldn’t hope to squeeze shut the throat of a Behemoth, so he simply let go as Galian Beast flexed its muscles stepping from the creaking bed. Chaos was a slim, humanoid beast, this one though was easily twice its size and at least thrice its muscle mass. Tiny, malevolent eyes narrowed at its opponent as drool dripped from its fangs.

“Again?”. Sephiroth asked Vincent assuming he was somewhere still aware inside the monster. “So it’s true, you do have next to no control over your transformations!”

Galian Beast gave no answer, who knew if it was even that intelligent. Instead it lunged at him with a roar ready to tear the man’s head off. Sephiroth’s arms shot upwards inhumanly fast. Hands locked onto the beast’s jaws keeping them apart. Drool dripped onto Sephiroth’s face and shoulders as the beast’s neck muscles strained pressing down on him with all their might. Its front paws closed around the man’s chest to crush it and be done with him, from its position though it couldn’t see the smile on the man’s features.

“You’re a fine beast”, Sephiroth mused, “but only a beast.”

A hard yank with his arms that nearly didn’t cost him energy and the creature crashed sideways into the ground hard enough to split the floorboards. If a hand wasn’t enough, then it would be an entire arm closing around the monster’s throat, Sephiroth thought nonchalantly. His foot shot down crushing the beast’s paw underneath that yelped in anger and pain. With that out of the way he only had to sit on its back and pull its head to expose the neck and wrap his arm around it. In his deathlock the beast started to writhe and howl like a banshee. The muscular tail crashed into the walls ripping into them, trashed the bed and felled the antique wardrobe dismantling it into its components. No matter how hard it fought though, Sephiroth wouldn’t let go. No jaws snapping at his hair and after his legs would help it, even its large horns were useless against a foe behind it. All the young Calamity had to do was wait until Galian Beast grew too weak to resist. Eventually its legs folded underneath it and its nose touched the floor, a foaming and wheezing mess.

“Down, boy!”, Sephiroth commanded.

A breathless huff was his reply. The fight was over. A shiver went through the beast, fur retreating leaving pale skin and in his grip lay a barely conscious Vincent Valentine, barefeet and clad in nothing but the white gown he had given to him for surgery days ago.

The room was an absolute mess.

With mocking gentleness the silver general lowered him to the floor brushing black strands of his hair out of his face.

“You see, _Vincent Valentine_ , I have much use for you and you will neither escape nor die before I have what I want. We will speak again. Rest well until then.”

He walked out with all the integrity of a general having won a battle. He pulled the door shut behind him, and it slammed close with the sound of a cannon being fired. Firm steps carried him downstairs to the library where he too shut the door behind him leaning against it. What Vincent couldn’t see was how he slid down against the door hands holding his throbbing head.  
  
\----------

  
  


**“You messed him up real good”** , the demon said, a hint of awe in his voice.

He flexed his wings and the shadows danced on his skin like fairy light. His presence filled the room with an unholy light.

Vincent didn’t comment and for a moment just remained in his place on the floor from which he still hadn’t risen, one hand on his chest to calm his heart. There was cold sweat on his forehead again and he was shaking, the emotional turmoil as well as the physical exertion having exhausted him severely. He would have to stop doing that, he thought.

If only Cloud could be here, he wished with a pang of sadness. 

Seeing his face, if only in his memories though, filled him with new purpose. He wouldn’t admit it, but Sephiroth was right: right now he was alone. Chaos hadn’t come to rescue him and he wouldn’t in the future. He could not be counted on. He would have to concentrate his energy on his training as a Turk and escape this by being smart. He needed to heal and in the meantime he would have to play nice and not rile up Sephiroth into putting him through any more of the horrors he was capable off. Then he had to alert the others; not gathering them immediately had been a mistake. First, though, he needed to heal. 

The menacing form of him-not-him looked down at him quizzically, his multiple wings folded behind his back. They had feathers now, all of them white as snow, except for one crooked looking, bat-like wing the few feathers it had black as night.. When Chaos had still inhabited _his_ body he had never had more than two wings! The creature tilted its head and impressive horns sideways.

A little slower than desired Vincent sat up wrapping his arms around himself.

“Does it _please_ you to make fun of other people’s pain?”

The demon’s response was immediate and he didn’t have the good grace to laugh because it wasn’t a joke:

**”On my list of favourite things to do.”**

Now he smiled. Fangs like moonlit bones protruded over his lips.

**“You’re hitting the weak spots in him - you mentioned Lucrecia; that hurt him. I felt him crumble. If you keep hammering on his mind from the outside and me from the inside, over time we can break him beyond recognition. He doesn’t have the Protomateria - he won’t be able to suppress my influence for long. I can’t be absorbed into his stream. I’m in a favorable position. His threat will soon be eliminated.”**

The demon lowered himself to his knees just in front of Vincent, hands reaching for his face. His nails were too long, sharp and felt strange on his skin. Despite his growing disgust about himself and the entity, Vincent let the touch happen without much resistance. He couldn’t feel the same joy as the creature.

“I haven’t wished for any of this”, he said listlessly.

He felt fear for himself, for his son and pity deep in his guts but mainly a growing emptiness as his feelings were dying and running through his fingers like fine sand.

“I need to know!”, he looked up at the WEAPON. He grabbed his shoulders so Chaos wouldn’t avoid him. The creature didn’t even move as Vincent pulled at him, he was the statue of a saint displayed at a church. There was hardly a serious thing to get out of the demon, but this time… maybe this time: “Tell me, Chaos! Would he do it? Would my own son rape me?”

Had his son done a thing like this before? Oh he knew the answer would likely not give him any peace of mind, but he needed to know. Maybe something, anything, in him hoped he wasn’t right. He wanted to believe that there was decency left in the boy he had failed so many years ago, maybe then he could live with the shame.

Chaos must have noticed he was grasping at straws.

**“Why you still care about him is a riddle to me.”**

He pressed his lips onto Vincent’s possessively, as everything the WEAPON did. Not _everything belonged_ to Sephiroth. The gunman didn’t fight him. He accepted the kiss, seeking it even for that little bit of warmth he felt had been pulled out of his body as Sephiroth’s merciless gaze had pierced him. Noone else, he felt, would ever understand what his familiarity with the WEAPON was. Vincent himself suspected it was inhuman and had come to terms with it. When Chaos retreated he let his hands slip off his shoulders making no move to keep him close - as always the demon came and went as he pleased. Chaos would never understand - not fully - the thing called love, parental or otherwise. Feeling it was not the same as grasping its meaning. Only poor Vincent ever knew what it meant and he could have despaired over it had he not done it already so many years ago when he had still been a Turk and his death had been fate written into the book of his life. Now it was only history, another kind of horror, but a distant one.

“It was you…”

Vincent tugged at his bandages.

Chaos faintly nodded.

**“Sephiroth has taken the Calamity’s place as god of the red lifestream. When many thousand years ago she came to this planet the planet’s favoured race, the Cetra, fell victim to her taint. They died, Jenova was sealed and humans remained, you know the story. Humans found a way to not only free her, but to reproduce her in the form of Sephiroth. But the young Calamity is not entirely Jenova cells, a part of him is human and though he surpassed that stage gifting his soul, his entire being, to the Red, still he was born human and that is _his_ taint, the flaw he’s meaning to erase. I can not allow for that to happen. The soul is a powerful energy, all the cells of your body heed its call. One day, none of ‘Sephiroth’ will be left. Until then he must be dust and ashes for Jenova to never rise again, in her body or anybody else’s. While inside his mind I saw the new world he seeks to birth from his stream: it is a world where the natural flow of things is nullified, where there is no peace and no suffering, life rules supreme and life his him. There is only Sephiroth. It is a world that cannot exist. Letting him prevail means the extinction of the entire existence as we know it and I’ve found a way to prevent it while he is still not fully developed as god of the Red. Sephiroth is basically Jenova cells and those are mutable, her greatest advantage and her worst flaw. Jenova adapts and therefor she is weak to outside forces. Cloud thinks Sephiroth is powerful and he comes back stronger for it. The world trembles to his feet and he rises more terrifying than ever. It is a disastrous cycle allowing for his atrociousness to be, so while in his mind I found a simple truth. I exposed him to his own insecurities, I wouldn’t cease to exist, but kept being a thing he found himself powerless against and to this Sephiroth that has been born anew so recently there has never been a thing he has been powerless against. It upsets him and I started to experiment, to see how far I could push him.”**

Vincent had almost forgotten the floor was cold against his feet. Not ever had there been a mass of information from the WEAPON like this, not ever had Chaos spoken to him so clearly and purposefully. He listened intently trying to memorize as much as he could.

**“It was me who caused him pain enough to cry. He is slowly realizing the danger I am to his being.”**

Vincent’s head was swimming.

“Influenced by outside forces….”

The bandage around his chest gave a little and he tugged at another corner in thought when it occurred to him:

“Chaos! If he is influenced by people, then not only you should be able to alter his mind, I should be able to do so as well!”

It was a small hope, a tiny one because Vincent knew nothing was harder to change than the minds of people, but maybe.. only maybe a shove hard enough, into the right direction…

He grabbed the WEAPON with sudden force.

“You once tried to kill me when you were new and I had just woken down in the basement of this very house! You did your best to destroy me and escape and you would have succeeded hadn’t I had the protomateria. You later said it would have left me in a vegetative state, my mind lost until eventually my body followed suit and died.”

It was without a doubt what he was trying to do to Sephiroth - without much success so far, it seemed.

“Do you think you can destroy only _parts_ of a mind too? And maybe parts of a body? The same way you altered my body and gave me wings and claws, the same way you claim to burn illnesses and remove cancerous cells - would you not be able to do it to Jenova as well?”

Vincent had never been sure if the experiments that had made him hadn’t involved Jenova cells as well, he only knew that for as long as he’d had Chaos there had been none in his body.

The beast made a face of disgust, its seriousness gone faster off the rails than a crashing train.

**“Whoa, whoa, that's _not at all_ the direction we are taking! We going to destroy the bastard, not - you’re so emotional, Vincent!”**

Said man lowered his forehead in a threat. His red gaze burned into the WEAPON’s yellow one while his fingernails dug into his upper arms.

**_“Fuck you!”_** Chaos spat. 

**“He almost destroyed the world three times. The likes of him should not be given another chance. He’s scum, for Gaia’s sake he believes he’s sane-!”**

Chaos suddenly stopped talking. He slipped from Vincent’s grasp so his nails left scratches on his arms. Like this he towered over his former host.

**“Do what you want. With or without your help, I’m going to continue to destroy him unless he proves his worth to Gaia.” His tone was angry. “Attempt to save him if it makes you feel any better, but you’re on a clock. I will not have mercy.”**

“Fuck you too, I’m not asking for any favours!”, Vincent uncharacteristically bit right back. If someone (like Cloud!) thought he couldn’t swear then they forgot he’d spent most of their journey sharing a room with Cid!

It wasn’t like he was happy hearing about his son’s imminent death, but he knew as well as anyone else that it would likely not be able to be avoided, but hell if he wasn’t going to try! Vincent took an angry breath; angry and sorrowful, but more angry. And determined.

“Scratch that - I _am_ asking a favour”, he then said. 

“Show me my son, my _real_ son. You’re in his mind, it should be possible for you to take me with, if only for a brief moment. You’re Gaia’s most powerful WEAPON, you rule over the lost and damned, so show me my son!”

The beast’s brows furrowed above his piercing eyes.

“I want to see the true extent of his cruel, twisted nature. It will likely hurt me, you should be happy to do this to me.”

Chaos stared at him fire in his gaze. Then he looked to the ceiling and sighed dramatically. He made a face, then a series of faces to express his disgust, then said, **“Fine, at one condition.”**

He grabbed Vincent’s chin with his claw hand and pulled them nose to nose. 

**“Once upon a time, in the small town of Nibelheim, you said ‘fuck you’ and I will take you up on that offer.”**

That’s when Vincent knew he had won. For now, at least. Relief washed over him like warm water and almost made him cry. Whatever the demon wanted of him, it didn’t matter and for a moment he felt his old dare-devil attitude return to him, the one that had gotten him in trouble in his Turk days.

“Big request for a creature looking at me with the face of a man he’d rather have me shun”, Vincent retorted.

He looked at the demon unafraid - in fact, maybe, he’d come to enjoy their banter. Chaos was always trying to assert his authority and in that, paradoxically, he already seemed less perilous.

Vincent smirked. Two could play this game.

“ _Earn it_ and we will see.”

**”You’re the one asking for favours, not me,”** Chaos huffed and let go of Vincent’s chin.

Six wings spread, pristine feathers illuminating the wreck of a room and the rubble on the ground. The Death Penalty appeared in his hand. As a summon weapon it existed everywhere at once and nowhere at all at the same time, the will of its owner giving it shape and bringing it forth. To Vincent it was a gun, to Chaos it was whatever, to Sephiroth it was a sword. Masamune had changed into a smaller, thicker form, crooked and spiked, violently spliced with the demon’s own form of being. It was a strange variation of a sword, its unholy glow indicating its use wasn’t all that common either. Its purpose though was the same as any swords.

Betrayal flared up in Vincent’s chest and a sense of panic, but to avoid the hit it was, of course, too late. Vincent sighed out his life on the first floor of Shinra mansion in early autumn. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Chaos sucked up his soul the moment it emerged. He remembered the building structure of every cell, every bone’s makeup, even the number of hair on his head as he became a part of him.

 

Oblivion, though, was merely a moment, as short as the blink of an eye. Vincent came to knowing his consciousness had been gone for no longer than it took a dragonfly to bat its wings once. Chaos’ hold on his soul felt like strings attached to his fingernails all pulling at once. It felt like being dragged through deep water. Neither temperature nor any of his real senses existed here. They returned rapidly though.

Vincent stumbled as gravity bore down on him and glued his soles to the floor. The muscles of his body gained weight again, his bones took the brunt of the impact that was really just the re-palpability of existing at a certain time in a certain space of the universe.

He looked up into this new world with wonder. Black hair hung in his face and impaired his vision. When he looked at his hands he found they had never been gone and as he grasped his middle where a large wound should be he was unscathed. The surgery wounds were gone!

He straightened his back and felt no pain at all!

**“Welcome to Sephiroth’s mind”** , Chaos greeted him.

**“You won’t enjoy your stay.”**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the promised tracklist for this fanfic, maybe someone enjoys it as much as we do. Do tell us your opinion on the new chapter too, we're always excited.~
> 
> White Foxes - Susanne Sundfor  
> Man - Take That  
> Pushing - Firefox AK  
> Spectrum - Florence and the Machine  
> Chances - Kosheen  
> Overkill - Kosheen  
> I found - Amber Run  
> Hurts like Hell - Fleurie  
> Grande Finale - Studio Killers  
> The Ash Is In Our Clothes - Sleeping At Last  
> Countdown - Isaac Shepard  
> Heirloom - Sleeping At Last  
> End of the Line - Morten Harket  
> Heartbeats - Nine Lashes


	7. The worth of love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot of violence in this part and a lot of angst. Family relations are being revealed and tears are being shed.

_“What is love in any way? A wise man I once knew said it is the one ailment we willingly accept; like magic it both heals us and destroys us. Who, though, is to be our judge? If the greatest love on this planet is the love of a child for its mother how can anyone blame Sephiroth for putting it above everything else? Did it really destroy him or did it save him from an early death by giving him a reason to go on? The most cruel things in this world are done out of love they say and it must be true, because no other emotion changes us so thoroughly, turns us from the inside out. Love knows no compassion, no hesitation. It knows no bounds and for this reason alone many fear it for all of their life. Dare say Sephiroth went insane, maybe he is the only one of us who is not. He became different, as much is true. Maybe he is the only one of us who ever really knew what love is.”_

Vincent had expected something less _solid_ , but what was before him was a perfect replica of reality. In Sephiroth’s mind he was greeted by a city eerily similar to Midgar which it was likely based on, perfect down to the little stones and grey concrete under his boots. The orange light of the streetlamps reflected from the golden metal. As he reached aside were a familiar weight pulled on him he found he was wearing his golden claw which he was sure he hadn’t even seen since Sephiroth took it from him many days ago.

He breathed in an the city assaulted him with veridicality. It smelled of rain, gasoline and a distant whiff of mako the wind carried over the sky high buildings. They were made of glass gleaming like myriad eyes under darkened clouds. For a place so familiar Vincent felt awfully lost like a small child. 

Chaos pulled him along. 

**“Most people have one place they relate to the most, a space to call home even when they aren’t,”** Chaos said as he yanked Vincent through a crowd of people in Shin-Ra uniforms. Noone seemed to mind the beast in their midst, in fact noone even looked their way even though the WEAPON cleared a path rudely bumping into anyone who wouldn’t make way. They reminded Vincent of puppets: blind, deaf, uncaring. In the middle of the street Chaos turned to face him. Even within a dream he was radiant, maybe even more so; all white feathers and impossibly long lashes. The silver horns on his head made him appear more like a divine messenger, not a creature one could meet and tell anyone the story. Vincent swallowed hard as if testing he still had a throat to do so. He felt he wouldn’t ever get used to speaking to Chaos in physical presence especially not with him wearing the face of his son. The WEAPON seemed to not notice his brief struggle with whatever the hell he was supposed to feel now that he had died only a few minutes ago!

**“Seen like this that space is filled with their personal possessions and sometimes a few friends. Much of it is highly symbolic in nature - photos to represent times past, favourite toys from a childhood long gone and a trauma here and there. Sephiroth is different: he has three spaces to call his basis of operation. They are gigantic and seem connected without priority like three ends of a triangle. If I wreck one pillar of consciousness the other two will balance his mind until it stabilizes. It seems as if only you and I working together are able to do real damage.”**

Vincent’s mind spun. Chaos wanted to go on, but Vincent pulled his hand free.

“Is this where you spend your time when you’re… when you don’t have a body? Inside these places? Here?”

The creature snorted.

**“Don’t be ridiculous. What you see is what your mind makes of the input, it is whatever you can deal with. Think of it as a dream, or a projection. The SOLDIER floor has a virtual reality training room which you have used before, have you not?”**

He had, in fact. It was part of the training as a Turk to pass through various _situations_ as they called them. Vincent had never thought of them as anything else but illusions, but this? This confused him greatly.

“How can everybody have a place in their mind, I never saw mine! I never made one!”

Chaos was loosing his patience.

**“Then don’t think of it as a place, but a feeling, an emotional memory that creates itself. Home in a pocket only without the pocket. Your personal reality you take as a given.”**

Vincent thought he was starting to understand when Chaos abruptly turned to make his way down the street and he had to be fast to catch up. For some reason he really didn’t want to be alone here. Building were sprouting like gargantuesque fingers left and right as they were walking. The gunman was sure the real Midgar had no buildings that huge. There were no personal possessions either as far as he could see, everywhere were screens though and posters and dropped-on-the-street flyers. On each and every one was Sephiroth's face. SOLDIER advertisements, shampoo advertisements, interviews, pictures, souvenirs. It almost looked as if here, in his own little world, Sephiroth was the only celebrity. 

Vincent looked around with a feeling of unease and found that every person was headed the same way, a flow like a river they were following. Not everyone wore a uniform, only most of them, he realized. There were women and men in civilian and Vincent realized he knew some of them, at least their real life equivalents. He saw the back of a man in a blue shirt he had met selling car parts in Edge. When he tried to take a closer look though the man’s face blurred and was gone leaving only a frightening, smooth mask of skin. Vincent drew back in horror. The same happened to a woman close by. For a fact Vincent knew that he didn’t want to touch anyone here. They seemed hostile although none of them spent any particular attention to him and Chaos; it was as if they were dreams within a dream here, only that neither of them would leave an aftertaste within the creature’s minds, if they had one. 

Chaos distracted him.

**“Look at that guy there, with the funny cape.”**

He pointed at a figure standing in an alley and with a start Vincent recognized himself. 

The other man’s face was completely missing all features, as if skin had stretched over eyes, nose, mouth and ears until it was a smooth surface, yet Vincent knew for a fact he was stared at. He stared back trying to make sense of the situation. Other people started to turn. 

**“No stopping here”,** Chaos advised.

As soon as they walked again the strange creatures lost interest although the pale orb of the puppet’s face haunted Vincent for several more steps he took going with the sheer endless flow of people.

“Where are they going?”, Vincent asked uneasily.

**“Where we are going, of course.”**

**“Look what happens,”** Chaos grinned. He raised his voice and shouted: **“Sephiroth has weird hair!”**

The faces of the crowd split in halves, and flesh parted instead of mouths. A chanting arose - _“Sephiroth has weird hair!”_ they echoed. _“And his hair is so white!”_

Some said it with disgust, some spoke with admiration, some spoke with scorn. 

They entered the main square just in front of the Shinra building that was brimming with people all chanting and screaming. There was no getting through, so Vincent allowed for Chaos to grab his arms and carry him forth. The WEAPON’s large wings must have hit some of the puppet humans, but the gaps in their ranks closed as soon as they were gone. Vincent felt the wind on his face as Chaos put him down on a nearby roof and in the near distance he finally saw his son. In the dreary atmosphere of the city Sephiroth shone white like fresh snow. Everyone had come for him, but in a five meter radius around him noone dared tread.

He didn’t seem to take notice of them. Sephiroth, too, walked, but no matter how far he walked people followed him like looming shadows. A trail of corpses marked Sephiroth’s way, but they weren’t behind him, they waited in his future.

Chaos gave the crowd a new slight to consider. The chant was repeated, amplified and continued like a stone carelessly thrown triggered an avalanche. Eventually their biting remarks evolved.

_“Sephiroth has weird eyes!,”_ it became, or _“Sephiroth’s unapproachable!”_

Pain arouse in Vincent’s stomach and chest as they fell in tune with each other until the crowd was cheering with glee. He watched as his son ignored them and admired him for it even, because he himself couldn’t. The mad sing-song of subtle vulgarities made his very soul shrink into itself. _“Sephiroth is a monster!” “Yes, he’s a monster.” “He’s a perfect monster.”_

_“Sephiroth is perfect.”_

_“Sephiroth is so pretty.”_

_“Sephiroth isn’t human,”_ a voice sneered. 

Chaos turned to Vincent smug satisfaction on his face. Vincent liked to think he himself looked rather horrified as he began to grasp what this place, what Sephiroth’s ‘home’ really was.

**“The only one here with a face is Cloud, and he always looks constipated. Seen enough?”**

In the distance Sephiroth kneeled down by a dead man’s side and closed the his eyes. He folded the arms and straightened the legs to make a decent corpse of him. Vincent thought he recognized him as a man called Genesis Rhapsodos that had once betrayed Shinra and died. There were slain SOLDIERs, slain innocents of every ethnicity, slain children, slain elderly. There were those with geostigma, and those that were unrecognizable from burning. After putting the body in a respectable position, Sephiroth moved on to the next body while everyone judged him. 

Instinctively Vincent knew that fright was not an option. Fear lured predators; fear was weakness. He would be noticed.

Knowing this he beat it down until it subsided. He beat it until it didn’t stir anymore and was left confined to a small space in his chest resulting only in a hot, stinging pain: regret.

_I’ve watched enough. It’s all I’ve done for too long._

“Sephiroth!”, he tried addressing his son, Chaos momentarily forgotten. The WEAPON didn’t stop him as he started to climb down the facade of the house they were standing on. He jumped a distance of several meters as he couldn’t climb further assuming if this wasn’t real, he couldn’t hurt himself. He pushed people out of the way without thinking as his feet carried him onwards on their own to meet his son halfway to the lifestream.

This time Sephiroth looked up directly at Vincent. As he rose from a corpse to his feet unrest took the crowd. People turned their heads like the arrow of a clock moves and stops. They locked at Vincent. Chaos landed next to him in the space unoccupied by the creatures where Vincent stared at Sephiroth with sorrow. His six white wings folded only half on his back, ready to carry them away as needed. A strange quiet fell, all of a sudden all mumbling and shifting stopped.

**“Now you’ve done it,”** the WEAPON said. **“They’ve noticed.”**

Vincent didn’t really care to know what it was those creatures noticed, he only cared for Sephiroth who approached slowly, confusion edged onto the thin line of his lips. Cautiously Vincent retreated to the one presence that promised a certain safety: to Chaos. The WEAPON with its shimmering horns and wings of light suddenly seemed less like a god, more like a deceptively angelic epiphany.

Chaos put a hand on Vincent’s shoulder- **“Let’s not wait until he cuts us in half or the others become your worst nightmare. You might still need your sanity. Let’s go on.”**

Sephiroth did not pull his sword from a sheath: there was a sound and it simply appeared under Vincent’s throat, so close he had to stretch his neck not to impale himself on the tip. He could see the red of his eyes reflect on the metal.

**“Sephiroth has weird hair!,”** Chaos yelled over the crowd.

Immediately the creatures responded.

_“Very long hair indeed.”_

_“Does he dye it?”_

_“Does he ever cut it?”_

**“They say his hair is insured for 10.000 gil,”** Chaos suggested. 

_“Insured, insured,”_ the crowd chanted, _“So self-important that it’s insured.”_

For several long minutes Sephiroth held Vincent at the point of his sword. Minutes in which neither spoke. Then his gaze flickered and drowned in meaninglessness. For all of his life Sephiroth had been treated like a puppet and Vincent wished he had never seen the single moment his soul retreated behind that wooden mask like a hazel seedling back into its shell. Sephiroth spoke for the first time then as he went to one knee tending to his corpses again.

“I’m sorry I was not strong enough to save you,” Sephiroth said to the dead and suddenly, all the fallen in the palace of Sephiroth’s mind were instantly converted to red lifestream and collected in Sephiroth’s outstretched hand. Their energy became a big sphere, the Black Materia. 

As if it was a dagger he held the blunt object to his chest and pushed. He gasped, grunted in pain and still pressed on until the smooth surface passed his skin. He began to change physically.

**“We’re off to the next level!”** , Chaos cheered.

The world blurred around them and colours mixed into each other as if they dripped off a watercolour painting. Only Sephiroth, Chaos, and Vincent remained in place. It was disorienting, the ground gave way. Vincent tried not to fall, but needed Chaos to snatch him from whatever space crumbled around him and rebuilt. First he felt the heat! Fire met his outstretched hands, a raging inferno all around him.

With visible _pain_ Sephiroth changed form. Hair and skin turned white as he clawed at his throat with fingernails as translucent as the eggshells of tadpoles. It had to hurt as his organs reformed, wings sprouted and engulfed the lower half of his body where once his feet had been.

The heat was so searing it burned through Vincent’s shoes. They were still on the same planet, Vincent realized, but it had become a meteorite. The atmosphere had burned away, above them was only the glimmering darkness of space and behind them the Green Lifestream lay intertwining into a thread of light among the stars. With Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, and the other planets gone, the way was free to move to another Sun. 

Vincent looked up to see his son in a radiant god with six wings of light and one of darkness bathed in glory. Sephiroth had completed his transformation. His eyes were so cold it made Vincent’s soul freeze. He was entirely a god as he lifted his face to the constellation where the burning planet was headed. The earth below him cracked with fire and red lifestream.

_“I’ll be sure to save every single soul by leaving this world. We will be free.”_

Vincent thought he spoke to himself, but soon enough Sephiroth looked at him.

Chaos narrowed his golden eyes. He looked wary for the first time. They were at a deeper level of subconsciousness now and the deeper they went the less control even Chaos had. They had stripped Sephiroth from his perceived reality to his wishes now and wishes were nothing else but hope. Hope, Chaos knew, was powerful.

Sephiroth, as far as Vincent could say, wore no expression on his face as he said with finalty only a god could lace his words with:

_“Whose lifestream do you wish to be reborn into, Vincent Valentine - mine or that of Shin-Ra? Decide quickly, you merely have the rest of your life.”_

**“He shouldn’t know that we’re here,** ” Chaos hissed.

The gunman looked at Chaos and saw him differently now. He was a god like Sephiroth and of similar appearance, but distorted like a mirror image and what he stood for was completely different.

“Are you afraid?”, he asked the beast, surprised about how serious he meant it and how calm he himself was. Chaos didn’t reply, but his face darkened bitterly. The WEAPON had its own quarrel with Sephiroth’s existence, Vincent understood.

He looked back at his son, the god with a shining halo around his being and sighed in defeat.

“The rest of my life? That might not be so much anymore and maybe I should thank you for that. At least there even is _a rest_ now, not an endless stretch of loneliness and suffering - living eternally might just be good enough for _you_ , after all you fought to achieve this fate, but me? I was cursed with it and I’ve wanted nothing but to die ever since I became aware of that. What does ‘the rest’ of ones life mean to someone who’s glad to lose it? I’ve tried to kill myself a few times after I woke at Shinra manor only to notice death won’t come for me.”

_And once I’ve escaped, once I’m finally dead and this suffering is over - if it is a matter of you against Gaia, the planet I was born onto - then I surely won’t go on joining_ your _suffering instead,_ he thought.

Strangely he really wasn’t afraid much. He laid it all down before Sephiroth; it seemed like these were things that should have been said a long time ago, to somebody else maybe, but he never had done so. He had kept these words from the world to fester and devour him from the inside. They had been a storm ripping at his guts, but left his body as a warm breeze now. It was alright: they were only feelings.

“I’m already dead, I guess I died at Shinra mansion only minutes ago. You’re speaking to a dead man and the dead belong to Chaos. I have endless faith in that.”

He had been with Chaos long enough to know: what the demon had he would not let go again. Who’d have thought death felt so meaningless once you had crossed that line?

_“For a dead man,”_ Sephiroth said, _“you have wild hopes for the future. You expect your next reincarnation to be one free of pain.”_

He batted his many wings impatiently. They gleamed like sunlit glass.

_“Just because you cheated immortality doesn’t mean you are better off the next time you will be reborn among vicious beasts. I offer you peace, though, Vincent Valentine. I will break the cycle by taking the Chosen Ones to a new planet, a new beginning. The goddess of this planet listens to your pleas no longer, it is dormant and careless. She is dead and in her corpse’s stead I have arisen to lead you to the Promised Land to a new, shining future.”_

Vincent became angry. Was his son really that blind?

“If any part of me is to be reborn, then it won’t be _me_ and I’m thankful for that! The lifestream doesn’t work like that”, he spat. From Chaos he had learned enough about death to know it wasn’t just another ticket to the theme park. He was only waiting to lose himself in the vast pool of souls and unite with all that he’d lost after he’d been put together from scraps to be born in a body of flesh and blood. Thanks to Chaos he knew enough about the afterlife to know that there wasn’t one. There was only peace and unity and the death of hope, despair and everything in between. He would not need any of it submersed in the sum of all that made Gaia, of what made the whole of this planet _,_ because all creatures, from the lowest mako beast to the crown of evolution, were the same. They all were Gaia. Separation did not exist and so neither did rebirth as the same soul over and over. He might have lived a thousand lifes before he was put together to be Vincent Valentine and he might live a million more blissfully unaware.

“You wield lifestream like a weapon when not even true WEAPONs dare to compromise it like that!”, Vincent accused the shimmering god.

“You act like you’re allmighty but you know nothing. You rejected the very planet you came from and the people you claim you want to save don’t even get any say in the matter. The truth is, all you ever wanted was to belong, but you felt you couldn’t and then you gave up. I pity you for all that was done to you, but I pity you more for what you’ve done to yourself!”

For a moment Sephiroth looked like he hadn’t heard him at all. Vincent soon figured though a god might not need to express his anger by distorting his features into something ugly, his voice was perfectly capable of getting the point across.

_“You menial blockhead.”_

Something simmered behind the slit pupils of his eyes, something dangerous.

_“Look at the universe around us and how big it is. If the Lifestream is the organism you claim it to be, then it can both die or grow, create offspring even. If Lifestream could only die through abuse, then the universe would not have life on other planets. No, Lifestream grows and eventually splits for new planets to be inhabited. Dr. Gast and Dr. Crescent, even your dear father Dr. Valentine, knew that.”_

He spread his pristine wings, puffed the feathers like an angry hawk.

_“I am chosen by the goddess of my stream to lead you through the universe. I am the son of Jenova, and the only one capable. Everyone in_ my Lifestream _chose me.”_

Stones from the Panet’s burning surface rose and swirled around him. 

_“I am your saviour, your hero, the messiah. I am a God.”_

Chaos sighed dramatically at his former host: **“And here I thought _your_ attitude was shit!”**

Vincent glared at him, but he wasn’t done with his son.

“And you think some mere humans’ insufficient research, some mere humans that have never witnessed any of life beyond their own existence, are a good source of information? Does a _menial blockhead_ really have to point a god at that?”

He had learned first hand how much of what Lucrecia had thought about Chaos was true and how awfully much was just plainly false. If she knew what he knew now, that Chaos was highly adaptive, capable of speech and able to genetically manipulate his body with a mere thought, what would she say? What would she say if she knew that ever since he had become the host of Chaos he had not ever felt hunger again? What if she knew that Chaos lived off _souls_ and thus his now inhuman host too had no other option? He’d long since made his peace with it. Maybe some souls just weren’t worth saving at all anyway.

“Can a Chosen One choose himself? How does that not simply make him a tyrant?”, Vincent argued. “Does the count of your followers make you a messiah? Be they a million or more, how many followers did Shinra have that you despise so much?”

Reasoning with Sephiroth was futile, Vincent knew. The answer to Sephiroth lay elsewhere, not here where his wishes were all that bothered him.

Sephiroth spread his arms as if to encompass all of existence within himself; the planet itself seemed to tremble beneath his feet and the firestorm roared in Vincent’s ears.

“What do you know about my attitude, Chaos”, Vincent turned to the WEAPON that eyed him unapologetically. “If the Lifestream is made of all things living then this world is for us humans and you aren’t one. You’re merely out death, everything we don’t need to live, merely to survive in the long run.”

Of course saying that wouldn’t hurt the demon and it wasn’t meant to anyway, but if Chaos didn’t want to deal with his attitude he would have to stop being a tool and get a different job than that of collecting miserable souls.

**“How about a different place?”** Chaos suggested with one eye on Sephiroth. His apparent dislike of the silver haired Jenova offspring was clear on his face. **“You’re talking to the version of his hopes and dreams anyway. Let’s go to his fears.”**

The world melted away, and suddenly there was the hum of machines. This time it happened so fast and unspectacularly Vincent actually stumbled forward. There was the flickering light of mechanical equipment, and the sterile smell of operating rooms. The air was dry and a child darted between Chaos and Vincent’s linked arms. He gasped in shock; Sephiroth was merely a child of seven years here. How often had he imagined the small child he had failed suffering for its father’s sins?

“Don’t be sad, Mother,” Sephiroth said pressing his little palm against the glass of a mako tube. Looming over him like a shadow were the mangled remains of what had looked like a woman once. It was nowhere recognizable as human anymore, all it was was a towering mass of limbs and organs. “I am with you now.” 

The scenery was erratic, unstable. It switched into different states confusingly fast. Suddenly Sephiroth was sitting; crying and heartbroken.

“Mother, please talk to me!” He begged the creature above him. “I can see you’re alive, you can hear me. Why won’t you talk to me?”

A figure walked past Vincent and as if burned unexpectedly Chaos hissed maliciously.

Hojo was thin and his hair greasy. It fell to both sides of his face like wet thread. He licked his lips. Vincent noticed his teeth were yellow from cigarette smoke - at times, at Shinra manor, when Hojo hadn’t been drinking he had been smoking too much.

“Sephiroth,” he said opening his arms. “My perfect specimen…”

The boy looked at him miserably.

“Why won’t mother talk to me? Please, what’s wrong with her?”

Hojo smiled as Sephiroth seeked shelter in his arms. He cradled him to his chest like a father would, but his words were so different.

“You were meant to be so much _more, my precious son._ She gave you to me, if only you became worthy, such wonderful, glorious death, she could maybe want you too. But you have only me, be a good boy and do as your father says.”

Vincent’s stomache turned and he tasted acid in his mouth. In helpless anger he watched as Sephiroth repeated every word that emerged through Hojo’s exsanguinate lips as if they were a mantra, to Vincent though they were like nails from a pneumatic gun. It was like everything he’d always feared became true before his eyes and immediately he knew that, as opposed to everything else he had seen in Sephiroth’s mind, this was _real_. This had happened and it was happening still behind his son’s green, hateful eyes.

He reached for the Cerberus. His hand closed around the weapon automatically. The hammer clicked as he drew it, three bullets taking their place inside three barrels.

The world collapsed with an inaudible sigh, like someone had popped a balloon. The sudden quiet swallowing him was deafening and made him hyper aware of the cold sweat of rage on his neck. He was holding the Cerberus so hard his bones shone through his knuckles, but there was nothing to aim at any longer.

_**“**_ **You know,”** Chaos whispered into his ear, **“Most people’s identities can be summed up with the image of a bedroom, Sephiroth’s though got issues.”**

Vincent barely listened. As he looked up he was in a cave glistening with mako. It coated the walls like ice and crystallized on the ceiling. There was Sephiroth like he had seen him before at the Northern Crater, encased in a coffin of ice and mako but this time he heard what Cloud had heared. It was a voice in his head that ran down his back like syrupe.

_Mother, I have found your body. I have the Black Materia. Let’s go to the Promised Land and never return._

“I made you perfect,” Hojo sneered as he raised his hands to the ceiling towards his life’s work, “let the whole world know how perfect you are!”

Vincent thought he would throw up.

“Maybe if I worked harder,” a thin voice wailed from a corner of the cave that, as Vincent turned towards it, flickered and became the lab again. A child of nine years and silver hair was sitting in front of an empty mako tube that had once contained its mother.

“Maybe if I was a better son you would have wanted me?” He started crying heart-rendingly balling his hands to little fists in his lap. Then he started screaming, trashing against the glass of her empty cell. 

“I want you to talk to me! Why do you not care at all, _why am I worthless?”_

Vincent felt what he felt. Had he not purged his soul like this himself that day when he’d woken at the basement of Shinra mansion all alone, realizing the abomination he’d become, realizing that time could not be reversed and that noone at all cared or would ever care? Had he not choked out all the same tears so they wouldn’t drown him?

But of course noone had heard him. Noone at all cared about his misery, his pain and sorrow and the guilt tightening around his neck like a gallows noose.The only one who had ever cared was Hojo who sat at his desk as the head of his new department, comfortably doing his job in this freakshow of feigned normalcy laughing about Lucrecia’s who so naively had played into his hands and about her little Turk’s fate. In this moment, in Sephiroth’s mind, Vincent felt with a pang that killing Hojo hadn’t done it, it would never do! If Vincent could only be alive again and meet him he would make him scream and beg. He would make him suffer the way he had made his specimenssuffer and he wouldn’t care about the shocked look on Cloud’s face or the saddened horror on Aerith’s. He would do it twice if need be.

He rushed forward; his hands closed on Sephiroth’s arms to pull him from his fit, but instead it was _him_ who was being pulled! Chaos grabbed him so fast it hurt. Vincent stumbled as gravity failed and reversed. He lost his footing, the ground and people dissolved into shreds like shards of glass.They were thrown out of the scenery back to the setting with the burning planet where he came face to face with the frenzied beast of a god his son had become.

“What must I do to be surrounded by people that will acknowledge me for who I am!”, Sephiroth roared. Even his tears glistened like diamonds or liquid fire.

Vincent couldn’t reply!

They were thrown off the burning planet and into the crowd where earlier the silver SOLDIER had laid his friends to rest. Vincent didn’t even care to keep his balance anymore.

_“Love you, Sephiroth!”_ the fangirls laughed.

_I love you, I love you, I love you!,_ came in a cacophonous chorus. They pulled at his clothes, his hair, his arms for tiny snipped of him to keep, uncaring that he was frightened until he drew Masamune in a swing and the faceless creatures turned to more corpses on his way. Sephiroth was crying and no person in the crowd walked to him to soothe him. The general disarray had Vincent feel like he would break apart.

And then they were thrown out of Sephiroth’s mind forcefully and Vincent Valentine was back in Nibelheim unsteady on his feet only in time to find Sephiroth staring at him instead of Chaos. He just found enough time in his confusion to recognize the walls and windows - reality, this was the real Nibelheim! - before he was violently struck. Pain exploded in his throat and in the back of his head as he hit the wall.

Dumbfounded he stared up at his son’s tearstained face. Out of sheer instinct he reached for the Cerberus again, but of course it wasn’t there. He was wearing white again; just a hospital gown, no pants and definitely no weapon holster. He didn’t even have shoes to his name.

“You had _no_ right!” Sephiroth roared. “No right to do that..!”

In shock Vincent could do nothing but gasp for air as his eyes tried to focus.

Sephiroth towered over him. The skin around his eyes had swollen to a sick red. Invading his consciousness without permission was a deed so black it should be on the list of crimes worthy of capital punishment. Yes, Sephiroth himself had committed war crimes and he had invaded Cloud’s mind, but Cloud had been calling out to him. Cloud was part of the Red Lifestream, had Sephiroth’s cells, _belonged to him_. But Vincent Valentine did not even share the makeup of his body with him. He was a no-one, he was Avalanche,the other lifestream, the _enemy._ Sephiroth had only so few memories left, but what he had he protected with a fierceness beyond control, he couldn’t lose them too! When the Green had torn his mind apart and eaten him alive surrendering his inconsequential memories had been the only option to keep at least a part of himself intact. The world was his enemy, Vincent Valentine was his enemy and Sephiroth _would not be defeated by anyone lesser than a version of himself ever!_

Despite his pain and shock the gears in his head started to turn, the strategist’s mind sat to work. What would be the best course of action to handle the threat of Vincent Valentine? 

_One: trust nothing he says._

His suicide attempted earlier had triggered Chaos, so killing him with his own hands should be impossible: it would only summon forth the demon that had proven to be worse a foe than anticipated. Valentine had to die of natural causes. The SOLDIER’s right fist hit him in his stomach where he thought the wound surgery had left would be. It only marginally was in Vincent’s favour that his excursion to death and back had healed him, it still felt like the hit broke his rips and ripped several organs. He hit the wall, spit blood to stain his attire.

“Wait!”, he choked, but it seemed Sephiroth didn’t even hear him.

He received a kick to the chin so hard he saw stars. The former Turk had undergone extensive self-defense training and had he been only half as shocked Sephiroth would have never been able to hit him this easily. Sephiroth was strong; having been like this for all of his life he likely had no idea _how_ strong he was! Vincent’s hands left bloody smears on the wall as he fumbled for leverage to get up.

_Two: remove his ability to spread the acquired information to his allies_. 

The coffin. 

Being locked up to die was a fate even Sephiroth found so cruel he had to think it over twice.

_Men don’t cry for themselves, they cry for their comrades._

Valentine was no longer a comrade: had never been at Sephiroth’s side to begin with as he had made clear! He wiped his tears from his eyes with the back of his glove. They buned his cheeks like fire.

Ifhe alone could take the Red Lifestream away from this foul planet then he had no room to care for anyone and anything! Everyone that had chosen to put their souls in his hands counted on him! He had made a _promise_ to take them to a land where they could start anew! He inhaled. His chest expanded, his back straightened. He put a stop to his emotions like he had used to do on the battlefield several lifetimes ago. Sephiroth became a god and in a god’s tone he forced on Vincent:

“I discontinue our relationship.”

He launched the next hit, this time blasting Valentine _through_ the wall. 

Vincent saw the hit coming, but felt unable to defend himself. Bones cracked, blood on his tongue. A short, harsh scream as he found himself on the floor clutching his broken hand. There was so much dust he could barely breathe. Sephiroth stepped through the hole in the wall, into the room that was the upstairs library. Ah, Vincent Valentine was only human and suddenly he looked so small again. Killing him would be no big deal.

“Whether or not you have information about Dr. Crescent is no longer a concern of mine.”

He grabbed him by the neck. The basement wasn’t far away, neither was the coffin. Valentine would die from thirst on his own and leave only the scratches of his fingernails on the inside of the coffin lid. May them find whoever dared enter the house years from now. 

They say that when you are about to die your life flashes before your eyes.

That never happened to Vincent.

Instead he saw Avalanche and all that he had failed to do before their journey, during their journey and after. He saw Barret that had been scared of him at first and said they should get rid of him. Cid popped up in his mind, the fun they’d had - he’d even had fun with him at times! - and his bewildered look whenever that was over and Vincent spoke his mind earnestly for once. Then there was Tifa who’d tried her hardest to see beyond his burning eyes and emotionless face and sometimes she even succeeded, but most parts of him she just misunderstood. Just like Yuffie that _completely_ misunderstood him. And then there was Nanaki who thought he knew what he’d went through, but really knew nothing at all. A child himself he had no idea although he meant well.

The only one who’d been normal around him had been Cloud. He hadn’t cared much about him which served Vincent right, but eventually they had found a connection between each other. Maybe he was the only one that had ever known the sorrow inside him although he had never witnessed. Whenever his blue eyes would cloud with sadness, whenever they mirrored the anxiety Vincent had long learned to suppress, he thought that they weren’t so different. It had been Cloud who’d reigned in Barret and Cid when noone would bother. He remembered Aerith who’d always smiled at him with her knowing eyes that didn’t seem to suit her age. Within those eyes there was nothing but life. Cloud had begun to admire him, but she was the only one that had ever looked at him like he was an ordinary human being. What had he ever given back? He loved them, but he had failed to connect to them all.

He reached out for his son and saw his fingers were stained with blood.

_“Stop!”_ , he begged.

His naked feet scraped the floor as he struggled.

“Please, stop! Sephiroth, you are my son!”

Sephiroth dropped him inches from the stairway. Vincent’s cheeks felt numb probably from the hit on the head earlier, but he knew they were wet too. The dust engulfing him itched in his throat and hurt his eyes, but he didn’t blink nor cough once, only looked at his son with wide open horror as his soul overflowed from his body through his eyes. And finally he was speaking his mind after a lifetime of silence.

“I thought you knew, but you didn’t; you _didn’t_! The way you softly spoke to me and told me I was safe, the way you were stroking my hair - I thought you knew, but you _didn’t!”_

It was like all of what was Vincent Valentine wanted to burst through his chest and be free of this cold cage of his mind and before he knew it his voice was loud, screaming in horror, helping in the process of leaving him an empty shell and his rotten flesh to wither. He wanted to, but he found that he couldn’t stand up anymore, his legs had to be broken or maybe that’s just where life had left him already.

“I did you so wrong! I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me; I died before you were born and left you to Hojo and his sick fantasies. When I woke up and found the woman I loved was dead and my child gone I wanted to kill everybody. I could have surrendered to Chaos just then, but I didn’t. When I realized what I’d become I should have used it to free you, but I was horrified; I was weak! I would have had to kill so many people, half the company; I knew that I would have needed to wade to you through a river of blood only to leave more in our wake as we ran for the rest of our lifes and I just _didn’t want to kill anymore_ , just no more killing! I couldn’t even die! A good father wouldn’t have cared. A good father would have fought the whole world to save his son! I committed a terrible sin! _”,_ he clutched his own face rubbing dust and blood into the tears. His skin sat on his face like a layer of hard plastic that he wanted to rip off. On the floor he just reached out for death.

“I deserve all of your hatred; _I deserve it_ and I will die at your hands if it means to set right only one tiny piece of your life! But I have only one heart in my body; please have mercy on me! I don’t know if there’s even a piece left of _you_ inside your head now, but you’re still my son! Please let me hold my son just once!”

Everything stopped. The world stopped as if stilled by the hand of time itself to never move again. The dust particles were suspended in mid-air, in clouds that would neither grow nor fall. A book was halfway its fall down to the floor. It had golden letters on the front and for some reason they seemed vivid and important. Valentine on the floor, one hand raised to stop Sephiroth’s cruel hands from throwing him down the stairs, a fall he would survive only barely and that would contribute to his early death.

Yes, Sephiroth had aimed to let him die horribly, but now he was unable to move. The importance of the previous words resonated in him and locked him in place. 

“Your… son?”

Had he not looked at Valentine and thought, _you are as handsome as I?_ Had he not looked at Valentine and thought, _you have the same eyes as me?_ Sephiroth had seen a resemblance, but failed to notice just how alike they were. Same height. Same build. Same nose.

He put his foot on the floor as twenty years worth of Hojo’s teachings snapped back into action like a knee-jerk effect. _Jenova cells are a curious thing, dominant before all else. I used their mutagenic traits well on you. It was clear to me from the start that you will look more like your mother, because you are meant to be more than human._ _You are different._

He had never looked even a fraction like his father Hojo. From his silver hair to his feet that were times larger, he was not the least bit the image of his caretaker, a fact he had been thankful for many, many years. Sephiroth was tall and Hojo was small. Sephiroth had perfect vision, but without his glasses Hojo was blind as a mole. Even his voice was the polar opposite of Sephiroth’s warm baritone. 

And yet, here before him was a man his spitting image, so obviously similar at least that it had been quietly rankling him. if Sephiroth had not white but black hair and not green but red eyes he would have looked like a brother to Vincent Valentine or… a son. 

So Sephiroth stared at him, very still. A father. Did he want to have a Father?

The thought downright frightened him. It had taken him years to escape Hojo’s influence and mar the mental fortress of logic the old scientist had built up. Would Sephiroth like to go through that again? _Twenty years of Hojo._ Fright was a hand that reached up from his stomach and clenched his throat shut so he breathing hurt. His nostrils flared in anger as he glared at the man that so unabashedly asked him to do that.

But that twenty years, that wasn’t all true, was it?

Twenty years of Hojo, but the seven before that had been defined by Professor Gast. Any memory of the man were gone, but there was feeling; there war the warmth in his guts when he rolled the name over his tongue like fine wine. The texts were there he had written into the books downstairs he had read just days ago, words full of praise and wonder for the small child with silver hair.

_Love him!,_ Professor Gast had written in one of Hojo’s notes on how to take care of babies as Hojo clearly had no idea how to raise a child. It had been merely a foot note, left in tiny scrawls as if as a joke. Undoubtedly it had been the Professor’s handwriting, he had recognized it from the few books Gast had left himself. And that, loving him, had Valentine just declared he did? What did that even mean? That Valentine was in a way like Gast?

Sephiroth realized he knew nothing about Vincent Valentine.

Sephiroth realized Vincent Valentine knew almost everything about him.

He stood there indecisively. The other lay there tense and frightened and they looked at each other. 

If Valentine really was his father, then - …the intrusion in his mind was allowed, right? Sephiroth had often wished for Mother to visit his mind, speak to him. Now his hypothetical Father had visited his mind, and was in front of him, spoke to him. Was this not, the version of events he had been hoping for, only with a different speaker, but who carried out the same role?

The mealstrom of Valentine’s explanation was too much to think about as it had hit a spot Sephiroth himself was less than confident in. That explanation of Hojo being his father - he had known, hoped, it had to be a ruse ever since he turned twelve years old. To accept anything else though was too abrubt. He didn’t know if the truth Valentine offered sufficed, or if it was too meager. Sephiroth’s ears echoed with every sentence but he did not take any of it in like he was reading a text and had finished a paragraph wondering afterwards what it had said. The meaning escaped him.

Sinner, that rang in him.

But one’s sinner is another’s saviour, and if Hojo was not his father, then Vincent was, and the possibility made him feel a whole lot lighter and heavier at the same time. If, if, if…

In his despair Sephiroth did the only thing left he could to verify any of Vincent Valentine’s claims: he trespassed the boundaries between him and Chaos. The creature, although a violent force itself, was a part of him now and their connection a two-way street. It kicked up a fuss once aware of his intrusion, but it was sudden and the WEAPON was weakend by its earlier escapades so it was only a matter of brutal power until he forced its metaphorical legs open to take what he wanted. He couldn’t hurt Chaos in a way the creature was able to injure his own mind, mostly because it was too far removed from human and had nothing it held so dear, but it had the information Sephiroth longed for. The former General took it and for better or worse, he learned. Understanding dawned in his eyes that darted from the destruction he had wrought on the room to the man cowering on the floor clutching his own twisted fingers to his chest.

“You will always be my son”, Vincent wailed silently as the ages old floor boards at his knees darkened with drops of his tears.

“No matter how many you kill and how much suffering you cause, I wouldn’t be able to stop loving you. I’m cursed that way, such is the punishment for sins such as mine.”

Chaos called it a weakness and maybe it was, but he had always been weak and he’d accepted that part of himself a long time ago. He was a monster and he was only human, that was his flaw.

“If fate decides that we should be enemies and that I should die at your hands, please know that I loved you and I love you still. It’s all I shall ever wish for; it’s all I shall ever hope.”

This man had been been broken once and then mended wrong, Sephiroth realized. This was Valentine opening a festering wound the likes of which he had seen on the battlefields of Wutai, pouring puss and blood out of his soul. A wound as such would kill a man if it remained close, but if one opened it, cleaned it right...

Sephiroth’s chin gained dents as he grit his teeth, pulled his eyebrows into a crinkled line above his eyes. He crouched down and he half - _half! -_ expected Valentine to pull out a pocket knife and stab him. He still thought it might happen as he put one hand to his dirtied cheek to brush off the blood from where it gathered above his lips on the cupid’s bow that looked just like his own. Vincent shied back from the touch excepting it to become torturous pain, but Sephiroth didn’t let him.

“Curagara,” he whispered.

The bracelet on his right arm lit up, and the material distributed the magic power to his fingertips. It seeped into Vincent’s battered skin illuminating it. 

He said nothing as his hands wandered down his arm, to his wrist. The bruised flesh twitched and he healed that too. Vincent cast down his eyes, leaning into the touch as the healing poured into him like fresh water. His throat stopped hurting; the bones in his lower arm hadn’t shifted too much and mended without fail. He felt unable to talk, all that escaped him was a soft moan of relief. His eyes, though, only watered more. Sephiroth cast his magic again, and again, and again, until Vincent held still, until there was no more left he could fix like that. 

_I don’t know if even a piece of you is left in your head now_ , Vincent had cried but Sephiroth knew. There were so many pieces, a fraction of his life in shreds torn out of context. He had lost his past, so little was left of it now. Sephiroth didn’t look him in the eye when he replied silently and contrite:

“...Can please.. all pieces left of me be your son?” 

Vincent didn’t fight him, instead he reached for his son’s hand and held it, pressed it against his forehead like a precious thing. And so he sat wishing to be Chaos again as he wept in silence and unable to move. Yes, he’d asked for an embrace, but he didn’t dare touch any more of his son than he was being given. He had no right to any part of the son he’d abandoned.

“Father”, Sephiroth said, “stop being so sad. I am with you now. We will not be apart again.”

Vincent wasn’t sure if he hadn’t just made another bad mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is terrible with the angst and we're nowhere near done...

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to this legendary fight between a god, a WEAPON and an immortal.  
> Originally this was written as an rp between me and the wonderful goddamnitaisha, hence our muses have blogs where you can talk to them!
> 
> [Chaos](http://ask-chaos-incarnate.tumblr.com/) by me  
> [Vincent](http://ic-vincent-valentine.tumblr.com/) by me  
> [Sephiroth](http://rp-sephiroth.tumblr.com/) by goddamnitaisha
> 
> This rp has been partially rewritten and edited to fit story standards by me. It will have several chapters but the exact number I don't know yet. While Vincent was rpd by me and Sephiroth by goddamnitaisha, Chaos was a shared character done by us both. His blog is maintained by me.
> 
> THIS WORK IS STILL SEEKING A BETA-READER!


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